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_jme Motives in Pagan Education 
Compared with the Christian Ideal 

A Study in the Philosophy of Education 



BY 

SISTER MARY KATHARINE McCARTHY, O. S. B, A. B. 

OF THE , 

Sisters of St. Benedict, Duluth, Minnesota 



A DISSERTATION 

Submitted to The Catholic University of America in Partial 

Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree, 

Doctor of Philosophy 



The Catholic Education Press 

Washington, p. C. 

June, 1914 



Some Motives in Pagan Education 
Compared with the Christian Ideal 

A Study in the Philosophy of Education 



BY 

SISTER MARY KATHARINE McCARTHY, O. S. B., A. B. 

OF THE 

Sisters of St. Benedict, Duluth, Minnesota 



A DISSERTATION 

Submitted to The Catholic University of America in Partial 

Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree, 

Doctor of Philosophy 



The Catholic Education Press 

Washington, D. C. 

June, 1914 






m 4 1914 



National Capital Press, Inc. 

Printers 

Washington. D. C. 



PREFACE 

The primary aim of this investigation is to compare 
the motives used in stimulating attention in characteristic 
Pagan countries with the motives logically consistent 
with Christian ideals. Experience has abundantly shown 
that Pagan motives will often percolate through a pro- 
fessedly Christian stratum, vitiating results. The hope 
of contributing even in a very small measure to the in- 
tensifying of interest in the question of motivation has 
prompted us to take up this line of research. The strik- 
ing contrast between Pagan and ideally Christian motives 
can, we think, best be drawn when the two are arraigned 
in juxtaposition. 

It is our pleasing duty to express our gratitude to 
Very Reverend Thomas Edward Shields, Ph.D., for the 
manifold help he has given in the preparation of this 
Dissertation, and also for the kindness and scholarly 
care with which he has directed our studies in the 
Philosophy of Education. 

We also gratefully acknowledge our indebtedness to 
Reverend Patrick J. McCormick, Ph.D., for valuable sug- 
gestions and to Reverend William Turner, S.T.D., who 
consented to read the first redaction of the Greek and 
Roman period of this Dissertation, as Reverend Franz 
Joseph Coeln, Ph.D., and Reverend Romanus Butin, 
Ph.D., did of the Jewish period. To all of these scholars 
we are indebted for valuable criticism while the author 
alone is accountable for any shortcoming in the work. 

Sister Katharine. 
Feast of Saint Scholastica, 
February 10, 1914. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS 

CHAPTER I 

Introductiox 6 

Aim and scope of the present work — Countries selected as 
types for study — ^Pagan countries, Sparta, Athens, Rome — 
The Jewish People — The Christian Ideal — Roots of Greek 
love of emulation — Sources of this work — Increased in- 
heritance of man today — The Christian inheritance. 

CHAPTER II 

Motives Furnished by the Homeric Epic 9 

Emulation dominant — Attributed also to the gods — Emulation 
evidenced in cause and progress of Trojan War — Par- 
tiality of the gods — Homer, the Greek child's "First 
Book" — Plato's opinion of using Homer as a text — Means 
by which the Iliad and the Odyssey reached the child — 
Minstrel — Rhapsodist — Xenophon's testimony of Homer's 
place in education — Christian virtues almost excluded from 
the Iliad and the Odyssey. 

CHAPTER III 

Greek Athletics in Homeric and ix Early Historic Times 16 

Skill in athletics — Diversity of contests — Funeral games in 
the Twenty-third Iliad — Prizes — Regularly organized ath- 
letics in early Historic times — Tradition of existence of 
contests in Pre-Doric times — Exclusion of women — The 
Heraea — Olympic games — Other games— General provision 
for physical training — Period of excessive athleticism — 
Withdrawal of Sparta — Critics — Xenophanes — Euripides. 

CHAPTER IV 

Spartan Training 22 

Peculiar conditions leading to differences in Athenian and 
Spartan training — Spartan need of training primarily for 
warfare — Education, a state care in Sparta — Constant 
vigilance— Flogging— Encouragement to steal — Content of 
Sparta's training— Youthful "fights" — Rewards of honor- 
Continued training during mature years — Criticism of 
Aristotle and Plato — Limitations of the system. 

CHAPTER V 

Athenian Training 33 

Thucydides' comparison of Spartan and Athenian training — 
Geographic conditions making for differentiation — Train- 



6 CONTENTS 

ing in warfare not essential — Personal perfection and per- 
sonal glorification the end — No state system — Early train- 
ing of the child — Private-venture schools — Texts, Homer 
and Hesiod — Meagre state supervision through the Areopa- 
gus — Aim of gymnastic training — Premium on physical 
beauty — Ephebic training — Dangers in excessive admira- 
tion for beauty of form — Rewards given the successful 
athlete — Limitations in Athenian training — Too much 
freedom — Nourished natural tendency to volatility — Prey 
to novelties— General estimate of the Athenian. 

CHAPTER VI 

Roman Education 41 

Comparison of aims in education in Sparta, Athens, and 
Rome — Laws of the Twelve Tables — Paterfamilias — Power 
of life and death — Strictness of discipline in Roman home 
— Pliny's account of training in the Roman home — Edu- 
cation essentially practical — Probable date of first school — 
School of Spurius Carvilius — Worship of Lares and 
Penates a means of welding the family — Greek influence — 
Beginning of Latin literature — Effect of Greek culture — 
Decree forbidding Greek philosophers and rhetoricians to 
be tolerated in Rome — Disciplinary means in Roman 
schools — Horace's estimate of the flogger, Orbilius — Testi- 
mony of Suetonius, Plautus, etc. — Gradual relaxing of 
discipline — Tacitus' complaint — Isolated instances of 
awarding of prizes — -Quintilian on teaching — Horace's 
method of opposite example — Flogging censured. 

CHAPTER VII 

The Jewish People 52 

Ideal m Jewish education — Narrowness of their interpretation 
of the "law" — Monotheistic religion — High appreciation 
of their spiritual inheritance — Home education — Rise of 
distinctive schools not until after the Babylonian Cap- 
tivity — Discipline — Restriction of abuse of parental author- 
ity — Death sentence pronounced against unruly children — 
Content of their education — Injunction to obey the 
"Law" — The Prophets — Parents commanded to teach 
their children — The rod as a disciplinary means — 
Declaration of future rewards an incentive to effort — 
Learning made easy through unconscious appeal to the 
apperception masses — Summary of incentives — Effect of 
the Babylonian Captivity — The Scribe — Decree of Simon 
ben Shetach — Disciplinary means in the schools — Peda- 
gogical principles in the Sapiential Books — Comparison of 



CONTENTS 7 

motives in Jewish and Spartan education — Greek influ- 
ence — <jymnasia ephebium — Josephus' estimate of Jew- 
ish training — Fall of Jerusalem — Feverish educational 
activity — The Talmud — Content of Hebrew education after 
the Fall of Jerusalem — Appeal to the intelligence of the 
child to maintain attention — Analysis of individual ca- 
pacity — Aids to study — Studying aloud — Mnemonics — 
Young teachers proscribed — Patience — Respect for teacher 
enjoined — Summary of motives. 

CHAPTER VIII 

The Christian Ideal 72 

Dominance of the Spiritual — The Messiah's birth — Im- 
portance — Social, Political, and Educational — Events 
favoring the spread of the Gospel— Disgust for the low 
moral level of the times — Unity of political power, lan- 
guage — Loss of faith in the heathen gods — TertuUian's 
testimony of the rapid spread of Christianity — Woman's 
position in Christian education — Her position in the educa- 
tional schemes of Sparta, Athens, and Rome — Weakness of 
the marriage bond in pagan countries — High estimate of 
the value of human life in the Christian dispensation — 
Disregard for life in Sparta, Athens, and Rome — Exposure 
of infants — Ideal marriage scheme of Plato — Aristotle's con- 
cept of marriage and parentage— Right of life primary in 
the Christian dispensation — Christ's compassion for the 
suffering — Laws of church and land safe-guarding human 
life — Hospitality practiced by the Greeks, not charity — 
Emulation — Defects — Spiritual good, not primarily objects 
of sense, the desire of the Christian — Living versus 
preparation for life — Inhibition in pagan education — 
Christ's method not coercive — Dangers in negative 
method — Character building the aim of the Christian 
teacher — Strength of will and docility — Obedience to the 
spirit of the law — The aesthetic in Christian education — 
Roman training for practical excellence — Limitations — 
Christ's method — Utilizing the interests and instincts — The 
Parable — Parable of the Cockle and the Good Seed — Tem- 
porary withholding of application from all but his disci- 
ples — Significance of this — Saint Ignatius' care — Appeal to 
parental love — Embodiment of Christ's method in Christian 
Pedagogy — "Suffer the little ones." 

CHAPTER IX 
Conclusion 94 

BiBLTOGRAPHY 101 



CHAPTER I 

INTRODUCTION 

The offspring of primitive man, following the primary 
instinct of self-preservation and the instinct of imitation, 
would early acquire such knowledge as would fit him to 
maintain, independently, an existence on as high a social 
plane as his fellows. External incentives to exertion 
would scarcely be. needed. With the offspring of man 
who has outgrown this primitive state and has come into 
a social .inheritance, more or less considerable, the ques- 
tion of motivation is a more important one. 

What means were employed by Pagan peoples to enable 
and in a sense compel their offspring to come into posses- 
sion of their social inheritance, as compared with the 
methods employed by the Perfect Teacher will form the 
substance of these pages. The motives for study will, we 
think, in any case, be dominated by the ideal a nation has 
in its training. The instrument would to a great extent 
be modelled to suit the purpose for which it was intended, 
so. the motive made use of would vary with the ideal. 

The countries selected as types of Pagan training are 
the Community-State, Sparta, with the production of the 
soldier-citizen as ideal and emulation as the dominant 
motive; Athens as a type of a "virtue" and beauty- 
loving City-state with emulation as a motive, but emula- 
tion- to excel others not in physical strength and prowess, 
as in Sparta, but in mental astuteness and beauty of 
physical form through perfect and symmetrical develop- 
ment. Rome was selected as a type of country where the 
''practical" dominated as an ideal and the motive is 
rarely emulation but in large part constraint or punish- 
ment. 

A chapter on the motives employed by the Jewish 
People is included in this work largely as a. background 
to Christianity or perhaps, we might say, as a halting 

9 



10 SOME MOTIVES IN PAGAN EDUCATION 

place midway between the highly imperfect and the 
highest perfection. The ideal here is obedience to the 
behests of Jehovah. The motives were, we think, a high 
appraising of the dignity and distinction of their nation, 
and reverence for the commands of Jehovah. Constraint, 
of course, also plays a considerable part. 

Next, in the chapter treating of the Christian Ideal, we 
have tried to analyze the methods used by the Divine 
Teacher, knowing as He did from eternity, the laws of 
development He Himself had given to the mind and know- 
ing also the strength and the weakness of the individual, 
the use to be made of the instincts, etc. Here the spiritual 
ideal, seemingly dominant in Jewish education and yet 
fettered by hyper-critical interpretation of the "Law," 
is dominant. "For what doth it profit a man, if he gain 
the whole world, and suffer the loss of his own soul? Or 
what exchange shall a man give for his soul?'" 

In taking up the study of Greece as a whole, an attempt 
has been made to trace the roots of the Greeks love of 
contest and their reliance upon competition as a motive, 
back through the grey dawn of Homeric Times to the 
tradition, at least, of a more remote origin. In develop- 
ing the chapters on Greece and Rome the writer has 
felt free to wander through the fields of Epic Poetry, 
the Drama, Philosophy and History, wherever light was 
thrown upon either ideal or motive. 

The primary sources for Jewish Education were, of 
course, almost entirely the Old Testament and the Tal- 
mud, though Philo and Josephus have both furnished 
fairly reliable contemporary evaluation. 

The lines of development of Chapter VIII are not 
entirely original in this work. The chapter is in large 
part a working out of the Method of the Master along 
lines suggested in "The Psychology of Education"' and 



1 Matt., XVI, 26. 

2 Cf. Shields, Psych, of Ed., Wash., 1905. Chap. 25. 



COMPARED WITH THE CHRISTIAN IDEAL, 11 

developed in the Catholic Educational Series of Readers.^ 
Truth is eternal and since the principles therein laid 
down seemed to us basic and as such in conformity with 
the Teachings of Christ, it remained only to trace the 
sources of the development of these principles and to 
compare them with the principles dominating the other 
countries studied, in their educational work. The Chris- 
tian Ideal in Education is discussed largely along the 
same lines in the Catholic Educational Review.* This 
is simply a masterly presentation of the ideal, while the 
former is a psychological analysis of method. All of 
these works have been drawn upon. 

The inheritance of man, coming into possession of 
twenty-five or thirty centuries of accumulated culture, is 
overwhelmingly vast. How shall we keep our youth 
down to the task of acquiring this inheritance? The 
motives for effort in Pagan schools were, as it would 
seem, from an examination of facts, inadequate. Besides^ 
we have an added duty, that of transmitting a spiritual 
inheritance. This spiritual inheritance is not an addi- 
tion or an accretion merely but a leaven which, it would 
seem, should permeate and invigorate the vast bulk of 
material, literary, institutional, social and aesthetic, to be 
transmitted, rendering it the easier to transmit. This, it 
seemed to us, was the Method of the Master and therefore 
the Christian Ideal. 



3 Cf. Cath. Ed. Series, Wash., 1909. 

< Turner, Cath. Ed. Rev., Vol. II, p. 865. 



CHAPTER II 

MOTIVES FURNISHED BY THE HOMERIC EPIC 

In approaching the question of motivation in Greek 
education we are impressed at the outset by the domi- 
nant place held by a single motive, namely, emulation. 
So prevalent, indeed, was the spirit of emulation among 
the Greeks that the idea was carried over from the world 
of mortals into their conception of the world of the 
immortal gods. The first remote cause of the Trojan 
war was the anger of the goddess. Discord, upon being 
excluded from the marriage of Peleus and Thetis. 
Jealous of the guests, she threw among them a golden 
apple bearing the inscription, "For the most beautiful." 
She supposed, and rightly so, that the goddesses would vie 
with one another for this trophy of beauty and thus the 
harmony of the feast would be destroyed and revenge for 
the slight would be secured. Juno, Minerva, and Venus 
each claimed the apple as her right. Paris was called in 
to decide. He decided in favor of Venus, who had prom- 
ised as a remuneration to give him the fairest of women 
for his wife. Venus, as we know, fulfills the promise by 
aiding Paris in carrying otf Helen, the wife of Menelaus. 
This abduction is the direct cause of the war. 

The events connected with the preparation for the war 
were characterized, it is true, by magnanimity in the 
almost unanimous response of the Greek chieftains when 
asked to unite with Menelaus in trying to recover Helen, 
Of course, this ready response was in part, at least, 
simply a fulfillment of their vow to defend Helen and 
avenge her cause whenever necessary. There were, 
besides, some isolated examples of personal self-sacrifice. 
One of the most noteworthy of these was the willingness 
of Agamemnon to sacrifice his daughter, Iphigenia, one 
of the few characters in the Greek Classical Drama that 
is spotless when measured by the moral standards of any 

12 



COMPARED WITH THE CHRISTIAN IDEAL 13 

age.^ Still, the progress of the war was marked by dis- 
cord, contention, emulation, and deceit on the part of 
both gods and men. Indeed, the student of Homer knows 
that loyalty, as understood today, is almost unknown in 
the whole array of names. One of the most striking 
examples of disloyalty to a cause is that furnished by 
Achilles himself. He was angered at having to yield a 
captive maid, Briseis, to Agamemnon and would have 
killed him though he was commander-in-chief of the 
forces and as such the fate of the Greeks rested very 
largely upon him. Acting upon the crafty advice of 
Athene, always partial to Troy, he decided to sulk in 
his tent.*' For twenty-nine days, during which matters 
had gone from bad to worse for his countrymen, he per- 
sisted in his inactivity. Matters, as we know, finally 
came to such a pass that the Greeks were routed and the 
Trojans had begun to set fire to the ships. Neither the 
slaying of his countrymen nor the dishonor to his coun- 
try had power to outweigh a personal slight. When he 
does finally return to the field, it is from an egoistic 
motive, wrath for the death of his friend, Patroclus, and 
desire for revenge.^ Again, Zeus rules in name over the 
lesser gods who obeyed or disobeyed as it suited their 
whims. Right had no part in the whole strife. Mahaffy 
delineates the situation in the following words: "We are 
actually presented with the picture of a city of gods more 
immoral, more faithless, and more depraved than the 
world of men."^ 

Yet we know that Homer was the Greek child's and 
the Greek youth's main text for centuries. Hesiod, 
Theognis and Phokylides and some of the Lyric poets, it 
is true, soon found place on the curriculum, but Homer 
always held dominance. ''They [these poems] were com- 

5 Cf. Eurip. Iphig. among the Tauri and Iphig. at Aulis. 

6 II. Bk. I. 
7Cf. II. XVI. 

8 Soc. Life in Greece. London, 1874, p. 36. 



14 SOME MOTIVES IX PAGAX EDT'CATIOX 

mitted to memory by the Hellenic boys and studied by the 
Hellenic youths, who saw in Achilles a type of free and 
warlike Greece. . . ."^ Scenes of emulation and con- 
tention, craft and cunning were then the Greek youths' 
daily mental food. 

Motivation, as we know, may be influenced either di- 
rectly or indirectly. The ordinary sources of indirect 
influence are the ideals presented to the child through 
story, song, or dramatic presentation. The ideals fur- 
nished by the Iliad and the Odyssey found an early 
critic in Plato, who would have banished the reading of 
Homer from the schools in his ideal republic. "Nor yet 
is it proper to say in any case — what is indeed untrue — 
that gods wage war against gods, and intrigue and fight 
among themselves. We are not to teach this, if the 
future guards of the state are to deem it a most dis- 
graceful thing to quarrel among themselves. . . . Stories 
like the chaining of Hera by her son Hephaestus, and the 
flinging of Hephaestus out of heaven for trying to take 
his mother's part when his father was beating her, and 
all other battles of the gods which are to be found in 
Homer, must be refused admittance into the state, 
whether they be allegorical or not. For a child cannot 
discriminate between what is allegory and what is not; 
and whatever at that time is adopted as matter of belief, 
has a tendency to become fixed and indelible ; and there- 
fore we deem it of the greatest importance that the fic- 
tions which children first hear should be adapted as far 
as possible to the promotion of virtue."^" Yet Homer 
continued to be the "educator of Hellas" and the Greek 
gods and goddesses who were but glorified men and 
women, having human love and human hate but having 
superhuman power continued to pass before the minds of 
the children. 



9 Laurie, Pre-Christ. Ed. Lond., 1904, p. 197ff. Cf. p. 14, ff below. 

10 Plato, Rep. II, 378. 



COMPARED WITH THE CHRISTIAN IDEAL 15 

Even before the Iliad and the Odyssey reached the 
child through manuscript copy, the main narratives in 
Homer were known to him through hearing the separate 
episodes either recited or retold or both. Minstrelsy, as 
we know, held an important place in the formative years 
of the Greeks just as it did among the Celts, the Teutons, 
etc. But if we compare the content of, for instance, the 
Arthurian Cycle with the content of the Homeric Poems 
together with the dramas dealing with episodes con- 
nected with the main narrative, we find, in the first 
instance, men idealized so as to be almost godlike ; in the 
second instance, we find gods characterized as beneath 
fairly good men in the moral order. Both the Iliad and 
the Odyssey give evidence of the custom of having min- 
strels sing in at least the great homes. ^^ The Iliad refers 
to a minstrel only once^- but in book nine, where Ulysses 
and the other Greek heroes go to the tent of Achilles to 
plead with him to return to the field, they find him ' ' With 
a sweet-tuned harp, cheering his mind . . . and glorious 
deeds of mighty men he sung."^" This would seem to 
show that outside the ranks of the minstrel, song accom- 
panied by the harp was not unknown. The Odyssey, as 
we know, makes repeated mention not only of minstrels 
but of the subjects of their song. The themes mentioned 
are the episodes of a quarrel between Odysseus and 
Achilles, the story of the Wooden Horse, the return of 
the Achaeans from Troy.^* In their social gatherings, 
then, it would seem that the custom was to pass the time 
listening to the narratives later embodied in the Homeric 
Epic. 

During the latter part of the sixth century B. C. the 
''rhapsode" or the rhapsodist, a sort of professional 
public reciter, sang side by side with the minstrel and 

11 Cf. Jebb, Introd. Horn. 6th Ed. Boston, 1902, p. 74. 

12 Cf. II, 597. 

13 II, IX, 257 ff. 

i*Cf. Od. 8, 65; 8, 500; 1,352; 8,578; 9. 7. 



16 SOME MOTIVES IN PAGAN EDUCATION 

during the following centuries gradually replaced him. 
In Xenophon, Antisthenes speaking to Niceratus reminds 
him that others as well as himself are quite familiar with 
Homer : ' ' You have not forgotten, perhaps, that besides 
yourself there is not a rhapsodist who does not know 
these poems?" 

<< Forgotten! Is it likely," he replied, ''considering I 
had to listen to them almost daily. "'^ A second reference 
is made to the rhapsodists by Xenophon in the Memora- 
bilia. Socrates is speaking to Euthydemus relative to 
selecting a profession. Socrates says, "Then do you 
wish to be an astronomer, or (as the youth signified dis- 
sent) possibly a rhapsodist," he asked, "for I am told 
you have the entire works of Homer in your possession?" 

"May God forbid! not I!" ejaculated the youth, 
"Rhapsodists have a very exact acquaintance with epic 
poetry, I know, of course; but they are empty-pated 
creatures enough themselves."^'' 

Despite this low estimate of the mentality of the 
rhapsodists, if we are to accept the testimony of Xeno- 
phon, their power to sway an audience was great. An 
idea of their influence can be gleaned from Plato's Ion. 
Socrates is speaking. "But tell me this, Ion; and do 
not have any reserve in answering what I ask you : When 
you recite the epic strains so well, and captivate the spec- 
tators — when you sing of Odysseus leaping upon the floor, 
suddenly appearing to the eyes of the suitors and pouring 
out the arrows before his feet — or Achilles rushing down 
upon Hector or the pathetic passage concerning Andro- 
mache, or Hecuba or Priam — are you master of yourself 
or are you out of yourself? Does your soul in her 
enthusiasm think that she is present at the scene, in 
Ithaca, or in Troy, or wherever else it may be . . . ? " Ion 
replies, "When I look up from the stage, I see them 

15 Cf. Symp., Ill, 6. 

lexen. Mem. IV, II, 10. Cf. Plato, Ion. 



COMPARED WITH THE CHRISTIAN IDEAL 17 

weeping, and expressing fear and awe in sympathy with 
the poem, I am obliged to attend to such things. If I 
make them sit down weeping, I may laugh to think of 
the money I shall get: if I make them laugh, I shall 
have to cry for want of money.'"" The effect was 
heightened further by the fact that the rhapsodist spoke 
to large audiences, numbering at times we are told as 
many as twenty thousand.^- Before the boy could read, 
then, he had very probably an acquaintance with the 
''Wrath of Achilles" and the other main narratives con- 
nected with the Trojan War either directly from the 
minstrel or the rhapsodist or indirectly from the recount- 
ing of these narratives in the home. 

When the child could read, the Poems of Homer were 
given to him for they were thought to contain all that was 
necessary to make a well-balanced citizen. ^'-^ When Nicera- 
tus is asked in Xenophon's Symposium, what knowledge 
he most prided himself in, he answered ' ' My father, in his 
pains to make me a good man, compelled me to learn the 
whole of Homer's poems, and so it happens that 
even now I can recite the Iliad and the Odyssey by 
heart. . . ."-° Protagoras, in Plato's Dialogiie of this 
name, in outlining the education of the Athenian boy 
says: "And when a boy has learned his letters and is 
beginning to understand what is written as before he 
understood only what was spoken, they put into his hands 
the works of great poets, which he reads sitting on a 
bench at school; in these are contained many admoni- 
tions, and many tales and praises and encomia of ancient 
famous men, which he is required to learn by heart, in 
order that he may imitate or emulate them and desire 
to become like them."" 



17 Plato, Ion, 535. 

18 Cf. Jebb, Introd. to Homer, Glasg., 1898, p. 79. 

19 Cf. Strabo I, 3; Plato, Prot. 325 E. 

20 Xen. Symp., Ill, 5. 

21 Prot. 326. 



18 SOME MOTIVES IN PAGAN EDUCATION 

The literature, then, at the disposal of the child was, it 
would seem, largely the Homeric Epics in which the 
goddesses contended for a trophy of beauty, the gods and 
goddesses contended by fair and foul means for the wel- 
fare of their individual favorites, heroes contended for 
captive maidens. 

It has been urged by Plutarch in defense of Homer 
that "the recital and portrayal of base actions profits 
and does not harm the hearer, if the representation also 
shows the disgrace and injury it brings upon the doers. ""' 
This statement, we think, would not find general ac- 
ceptance even if these base actions were performed by 
ordinary men. If these were the acts of heroes and gods 
the evil effects would be more dreaded. There is not a 
single line, we think, in praise of morality in the Iliad or 
the Odyssey. The epithets applied to the heroes in these 
Epics all portray strength, dexterity, courage, etc. Such 
words give the only concept of virtue ; truthfulness, chas- 
tity, mercy or honesty never enter into the portrayal of 
the ideal man in the Homeric poems. Ability to "win 
out" replaces completely moral worth.^" 



22 piut. on Ed. Transl. Super. Syracuse, 1910, p. 100. 

23 Cf. Ibid., p. 186. 



CHAPTER III 

GREEK ATHLETICS IN HOMERIC AND EARLY HISTORIC TIMES 

The Homeric poems bear repeated evidence of the 
Greek love of competition. There is mention of games 
celebrated on varions occasions such as the entertain- 
ment of a guest, the death of a hero, etc. And it would 
seem that the perfection and skill portrayed in the de- 
scriptions of the athletic contests in the Iliad and the 
Odyssey could not belong to a people beginning an ath- 
letic life. "The descriptions of the games in the Iliad 
could only have been written by a poet living among an 
athletic people with a long tradition of athletics, and 
such are the Achaeans."-^ 

There is a marked diversity of contests. The wooers 
make pastime for themselves with casting quoits and 
spears. ^^ Then we have descriptions of foot-races, 
wrestling, boxing, throwing weights,'*' besides chariot 
races."' Euryalius, the Phaeacian, offends Odysseus by 
taking him for one unskilled in contests, a merchant per- 
haps. Odysseus resents the implication in the following 
words: "0 stranger, basely thou speakest; as the fool 
of men art thou."-* Odysseus entered the contests and 
outstripped all. Besides, he further shames the boastful 
Phaeacian by telling of the prowess of his youth and of 
his having contended with the gods themselves. He, 
moreover, speaks of a more remote past when men were 
more valiant and when men and gods commonly con- 
tended.-® This would point to the tradition at least of a 
well-developed athletic life even before the grey-dawn of 
the Homeric age. 



24 Gardiner, Gk. Athl. Sports and Fest. Lond., 1910, p. 11. 

25 Od. IV, 626. 

26 Od. VIII, 160 ff. 

27 11. II, 697; XXIII, 630; etc. 
2s Cf. Od. VIII, 166. 

29 VIII, 220 £f. 



19 



20 SOME MOTIVES IN PAGAN EDUCATION 

A detailed description of one of these contests is given 
in the eighteenth book of the Odyssey but the ''classic" 
description is that of the funeral games of Patroclus, 
occupying almost all the twenty-third Iliad. Funerals 
were marked by athletic contests lasting at times for 
several days. The most splendid and varied were those 
celebrated in honor of Patroclus. Here the prizes were 
rich and, contrary to the usual custom, every competitor 
was given a prize. The prizes offered in these Homeric 
contests varied; a woman skilled in needle work, a mare 
in foal, a tripod, an ox-hide, etc. Usually only the suc- 
cessful candidate was rewarded but at times, as we noted 
above, every contestant was given a prize. Despite the 
frequent recurrence of these contests, it would seem that 
they were rather a spontaneous outgrowth of the play 
instinct with no compulsion, no previous special training 
and on the whole, we think, no excess. Besides, the games 
were by no means general. When sports were held on an 
elaborate scale only the heroes contended. 

ATHLETICS IN EARLY HISTORIC TIMES 

When we pass beyond the shadowy Homeric period to 
the beginning of the historic age in Greece, we soon find 
regularly organized athletic festivals. These festivals 
for the most part seem to be connected with the worship 
of the gods and the games seem to have been but a de- 
velopment of the Homeric funeral games. "At Aegos- 
thena there is a sanctuary of Melampus, son of Amythaon, 
and a small figure of a man carved in relief on a monu- 
ment ; and they sacrificed to Melampus and held a yearly 
festival."^*' Ancestor worship and hero worship appear 
from this to have preceded the worship of the gods and 
to have developed into it. Nowhere could we find a trace 
of anything but free and wholesome spontaneity with 
little or no organization in Greek athletics down to about 
600 B. C. 



30 Paus. transl. Frazer, I, 44, 8. 



COMPARED WITH THE CHRISTIAN IDEAL 21 

We must infer from Pindar^^ and also indirectly from 
Homer that the OljTnpian Games existed in pre-Dorian 
times. "The antiquity of this sport at Olympia is con- 
firmed by the discovery of a number of very early votive 
offerings, many of them models of horses and chariots, 
found in a layer that extends below the foundations of 
Heraeum. This temple was founded, it is said, by the 
people of Scillus some eight years after the coming of 
Oxylus ; and even if we cannot go as far as Dr. Dorpfeld, 
who assigns it to the tenth or eleventh centuries, there is 
no doubt of its great antiquity, and that the Scillunites 
were of an Arcadian and not of Dorian stock. ' ''- 

From very early times women were not allowed to be 
present at the Ohinpian games. "It is a law of Elis to 
cast down from the mountain (Typaeum) any woman who 
shall be found to have come to the Olympic Games or 
even to have crossed the Alpheus on the forbidden 
days."^^ Only one woman, according to Pausanius ever 
attempted to be present at these contests. She disguised 
as a trainer, and brought her son to compete. Trans- 
ported by his success, she threw herself over the barriers 
within which the trainers were enclosed and in so doing 
her sex was discovered. Her life was spared, but shortly 
after "they made a law that for the future trainers 
should enter the lists naked. "^* However, there was com- 
pensation made for this discrimination by holding games 
exclusively for women; these were the Heraea. These 
games come down to us like the Olympic games from the 
mists of prehistoric times.^^ The prizes offered in the 
Heraea were crowns of olive and a share of the heifer 
sacrificed to Hera. The victor further enjoyed the 
privilege of setting up statues of herself in the Heraeum. 



31 Cf. 01. XI, 64 ff. 

32 Gardiner, Gk. Ath. Sports and Fest. London, 1910, p. 41. 

33 Pans., V, 6, 7. 

34 Op. Cit. 

35 Cf. Pans., V. 16. 



22 SOME MOTIVES IN PAGAN EDUCATION 

The names of the victors in various athletic contests 
have been carefully preserved. The record of the victors 
in the Olympiads from 776 B. C, the date of the first 
historic Olympiad, is complete, though some critics are 
disposed to call into question the value of the early por- 
tion of the record. Previous to the sixth century before 
Christ there were other Panhellenic festivals, as we 
know: the Delphian, Nemean, and Isthmian. However, 
it was not until the sixth century that we find anything 
like organized athletics. We find Solon laying down laws 
for the conduct of the palaestrae and the gymnasia. Be- 
sides, this lawgiver offered public rewards for the winner 
in the contests. The Olympian victor was awarded five 
hundred drachmae and each of the victors in the other 
games was awarded one hundred drachmae.'"' Besides 
these material rewards, the Olympic victors were often 
worshipped during their lifetime^^ and in some instances 
they were supposed to heal diseases and bring other aids 
to men. "I know many other places in Greece and in for- 
eign lands where images of Theagines are set up, and 
where he heals diseases, and is honored by the natives.^^ 
This Theagenes was a very noted athlete who is said to 
have won no less than fourteen hundred crowns.^® 

Sparta and Athens and, indeed, every other Greek state 
seem to have provided for the physical training of boys. 
Sparta provided also that girls should receive practically 
the same physical training as the boys. Competition 
entered into all the work of the gymnasium and the 
palaestra and the various local festivals furnished an 
opportunity of testing the skill. Early in the sixth cen- 
tury, we find youths admitted as competitors in the 
Olympiad. Thus, rival states had an opportunity to test 
out the products of their training and all classes soon 



36 piut. Solon, 23. 

37 Hdt., V, 47. 

38 Paus, VI, II, 9.- Cf. Luc. Deor. Concilium, 12. 

39 Paus, VI, II, 5. 



COMPARED WITH THE CHRISTIAN IDEAL 23 

pushed into the athletic arena. Much time was now given 
to so-called professional training and athletics became a 
science everywhere except in Sparta. The Spartan was 
never allowed to employ a trainer and hence he soon 
dropped down from the high place formerly held in the 
great games.**^ Sparta, from that time forward, con- 
tinued her policy of training primarily for effective war- 
fare. The other states developed a highly organized 
system of scientific competition. 

The old-time freedom completely died out of athletics 
during the latter part of the sixth and the early part of 
the fifth centuries. Henceforth, the athlete, in order to 
have any chance of succeeding, gave up his whole time to 
regulation of diet, exercise, massage, etc. 

Critics of exaggerated athleticism were early found. 
One ground for criticism was this that the competitor for 
athletic fame had to abstain from any other kind of pur- 
suit. This necessarily called forth the question, to what 
end?" Then, contrary to the usage of today, the athlete 
ate much. He was thus rendered, as they claim, torpid, 
effeminate and averse to war. Furthermore, specializa- 
tion in any one kind of athletic pursuit exclusively de- 
veloped one part of the body more than another, produc- 
ing lack of proportion. The long-distance runner de- 
veloped thick legs and a slender body; the boxer, broad 
shoulders and thin legs, etc.*" Xenophanes of Kolophon 
is the earliest critic of athletics we can find, and he is fol- 
lowed shortly after by Euripides who vigorously de- 
nounces the athletic life ; ' ' Of countless ills in Hellas, the 
race of athletes is quite the worst . . . they are slaves 
of their jaw and worshippers of their belly. ... In 
youth they go about in splendor, the admiration of their 
city, but when old age comes upon them they are cast 
aside like worn-out coats. I blame the custom of the 



40 Cf. Aris. Pol. 1338b. 

41 Cf. Plato, Laws, VII, 807. 
*2 Cf. Xen. Symp., II, 17. 



24 SOME MOTIVES IN PAGAN EDUCATION 

Hellenes who gather together to watch these men, honor- 
ing a useless pleasure. Who ever helped his fatherland 
by winning a crown for wrestling, or speed of foot or 
flinging the quoit or giving a good blow in the jaw? Will 
they fight the foe with quoits or smite their fists through 
shields? Garlands should be kept for the wise and good 
and for him who best rules the city by his temperance and 
justice, or by his words drives away evil deeds, prevent- 
ing strife and sedition.*^ 

43 Eurip. Pragm. Autolycus (Barnes Ed., 1-20.) 






CHAPTER IV 

SPARTAN TRAINING 

The old Greek ideal in education was to make men, 
ready in word and deed, '^ speakers of words and doers 
of deeds."** While these words addressed to Achilles by 
Phoenix seem to smn up the general tenor of Greek 
education in the entire land, yet, in actual working out, 
we find that the exigencies of the times, peculiar local 
differences, etc., tended to direct emphasis to one point 
in one city-state and to another in another. Thus the 
education in Athens and in Sparta came to be dissimilar. 

The nucleus of the City-state Sparta was a band of 
Dorian Greeks who, unlike their less-favored brethren, 
were not absorbed by the original inhabitants of the 
district in which they settled. But then these Spartans, 
being conquerors, and being compelled to live in the midst 
of the conquered, had to be continually on the alert not 
to lose the prize.*^ The difficulty of the situation was fur- 
ther increased by this circumstance that the conquered 
out-numbered the conquerors by more than ten to one, 
hence the need of training for efficient warfare, the pos- 
sibility of which was never an hour remote. Another dif- 
ference between the system of education in Sparta and 
in Athens had its origin in the fact that in Athens, the 
Laws of Solon left the task of directing the education of 
the child almost exclusively to the father of the family; 
in Sparta, as we know, the Laws of Lycurgus made edu- 
cation a state duty.*" "Every one in Sparta was a part 
of a beautifully organized machine, designed almost ex- 
clusively for military purposes.*' Education was exactly 
the same for all. To obviate the persistence of any indi- 



4* II., IX, 443; Cf. Monroe, Hist. Ed. N. Y., 1911, p. 64 ff. 

45 Cf. Plato, Laws, I, 630. 

4>iCf. Aris. Pol., 1333a; 1337a. 

4r Freeman, Schools of Hellas, Lond., 1907, p. 12. 



26 SOME MOTIVES IN PAGAN EDUCATION 

vidualizing tendencies associated with particular homes, 
the boys were taken from their homes so that all might 
be under exactly the same influences and might emerge 
from the training stamped only with that general stamp 
— the Spartan. No other State monopolized as a public 
duty the training of the child as did the Spartan City- 
state.*^ From the age of seven, the life of the Spartan 
boy was a matter of constant state supervision. He was 
continually under the public eye. He ate, drank, slept, 
exercised, as the state prescribed. 

This system of education in the gross found an advo- 
cate in Aristotle, although he condemns, as we shall see, 
many of the details of the system. "We must not sup- 
pose that any citizen belongs to himself, for they all be- 
long to the state ; and we are each a part of the state, and 
the care of each part is inseparable from the care of the 
whole. In this particular the Lacedaemonians are to be 
praised, for they take the greatest pains about their chil- 
dren and make education the business of the state. ' '^^ A 
somewhat detailed account of the Spartan system is given 
by Xenophon when contrasting the constitution of Sparta 
with that of Athens : ''When we turn to Lycurgus, instead 
of leaving it to each member of the state privately to ap- 
point a slave to be his son's tutor, he sets over the 
young Spartans a public guardian, the Paidonomus or 
' ' pastor " ; to give him his proper title, with complete 
authority over them. . . . He had the power to hold 
musters of the boys, and as their overseer, in case of any 
misbehavior to chastise severely. The legislator further 
supplied the pastor with a body of youths in the prime 
of life, and bearing whips, to inflict punishment when 
necessary. . . .'"" But the boy was not only under the 
supervision of the Paidonomus ; a complete system of 
espionage was instituted. When the Paidonomus was 



48 Cf. Xen. Pol. Lac, II, 2 £f. 

49 Pol., i337a. 

50 Pol. of the Lac, II, 2. 



COMPARED WITH THE CHRISTIAN IDEAL 27 

absent the Laws of Lycurgus gave '*to any citizen who 
chanced to be present authority to lay upon them in- 
junctions for their good and to chastise them for any 
trespass committed.'"^ But to perfect the system, if no 
grown person were present, the same Laws provided that 
one of the boys should be leader for the time. Thus 
there was an unbroken chain of supervisors. And yet more 
to be wondered at, the state kept watch even after the 
boys had outgrown the ordinary period of school-life. 
For Lycurgus realized that this was of all periods the one 
surrounded with most dangers. "This was the right 
moment at which to impose tenfold labor upon the grow- 
ing youth, and to devise for him a subtle system of ab- 
sorbing occupation."^- Again, a punishment was or- 
dained for the shirker, that of having "to forfeit hence- 
forth all claim to the glorious honor of the state. "^^ 

Accompanying this highly organized system of super- 
vision was an organized system of punishments. Flog- 
gings were frequent and appear to have been resorted 
to not only as punishments and deterrents, but for the 
purpose of teaching endurance. "We have seen many 
of them die under the lash at the altar of Diana Orthia. "^^ 
But besides these floggings there is still another circum- 
stance under which the boy might merit the lash. Plu- 
tarch relates that it was no uncommon thing for an Iren 
to send one boy to get this, another that, "these they steal 
where they can find them, either slyly getting into the 
gardens, or else craftily and warily creeping to the com- 
mon tables, but if any one be caught he is severely 
flogged for negligence or want of dexterity. . . . The 
boys steal with so much caution that one of them having 
conveyed a young fox under his garment suffered the 

51 Pol. of the Lac, II, 8. '^ 

5^ Xen. Pol. of the Lac, III, 2. 

53 Ibid., Ill, 3. 

54 piut. Life of Lycurg. (in "Ideal Commonwealths"), Lond., 1887, 
p. 32. 



28 SOME MOTIVES IX PAGAN EDUCATION 

creature to tear out his bowels with his teeth and claws, 
choosing rather to die than to be detected. . . ."^^ 
Xenophon, perhaps more reliable than Plutarch, says 
that the boys were trained to penurious living, but "on 
the other hand, in order to guard against a too great 
pinch of starvation, though he did not actually allow the 
boys to help themselves without further trouble to what 
they needed more, he did give them permission to steal 
this thing or that in order to alleviate their hunger."'' 
Again, in the Anabasis, Xenophon, speaking to Cheiriso- 
phus, says "for you Lacedaemonians as I have often 
been told, you who belong to the ' peers ' practice stealing 
from your boyhood up ; . . . and in order, I presume, to 
stimulate your sense of secretiveness, and to make you 
master thieves, it is lawful for you to get a whipping, if 
you are caught."" 

A very common form of punishment was to have the 
thumb bitten. We are told that the Irens were accus- 
tomed to seat themselves in the midst of the boys and in 
order to develop readiness of speech and brevity, char- 
acteristic of Laconia, to ask them such a question as, who 
is a good citizen ? Failure to give a prompt reply 
strengthened by the reasons, would inevitably call upon 
the offender this particular punishment. The "inspirer" 
of the boy usually had to bite the thumb of his delinquent 
charge under these circumstances. His duty here must 
have been a very delicate one. His personal interest in 
the boy of his choice would lead him, no doubt, to wish to 
inflict only minimum punishment ; yet, if the punishment 
fell short of the norm or exceeded it, the Iren had his own 
thumb bitten by a brother Iren after the boys had been 
dismissed. Their j)unishments, then, would seem to have 
been both numerous and wholly impartial. 



55 Life of Lycurg. (in "Ideal Commonwealths"), Lond., 1887, p. 22. 

56 Pol. Lac, 2. 

sTAnab., IV, 6, 14; Cf. Plato, Laws I, 628. 



COMPARED WITH THE CHRISTIAN IDEAL 29 

Since the content of Spartan education was for the 
most part music of the martial tj^pe and gymnastics, there 
was ample opportunity for the exercising of that bent for 
competition so characteristic of the Greek. Tests of 
dexterity in running, wrestling, javelin-throwing, fight- 
ing, etc., were frequent. In Sparta alone, however, did 
these fights sink almost to brutality. Cicero says that 
even in his day Spartan youths could be seen contending 
in battle and preferring rather to be slain than to re- 
linquish the hope of victory.^** The order of these youth- 
ful battles is given by Pausanius. First came the sacri- 
fice of a puppy to Enyalius; next, the lads pitted tame 
bears against each other and the side whose bear won was 
supposed to win in the fight. Then, as to the actual con- 
test, he says, ''In fighting they strike, and kick, and bite, 
and gouge out each other's eyes. Thus they fight man 
to man. But they also charge in serried masses and push 
each other into the water. ""'' 

Plato commends this custom of practicing for war and 
thinks that every city having good sense should take to 
the field at least once a month, "they should always pro- 
vide that there be games and sacrificial feasts, and they 
should have tournaments imitating in as lively a manner 
as possible real battles. And they should distribute 
prizes of victory and valor to the competitors, passing 
censures and encomiums on one another according to the 
character they bear in the contests and in their whole life, 
honoring him who seems to be the best, and blaming him 
who is the opposite. And let poets celebrate tlie 
victors.'"^** But as we shall see below'' he blames the 
Spartans for making war a primary end rather than 
simply a means of promoting peace. 

The reward of praise or honor was always highly 

58 Tusc. Disp., V, 27. 

5" Paus. Descr. Greece, III, 14. 

'■•0 Laws, VIII, 829. 

'1 Cf., page 31 ff. 



30 SOME MOTIVES IN PAGAN EDUCATION 

esteemed by the Spartan. We are told of a certain Spar- 
tan who was offered large sums of money on condition 
that he would not enter the Olympian lists. He refused 
the offer, entered the lists, and having with great diffi- 
culty thrown his antagonist, some one put this question 
to him, ''Spartan, what will you get for this victory!" 
He answered with a smile, "I shall have the honor to 
fight foremost in the ranks before my prince."*^- Plato, 
while recommending contests, "for these sort of exercises 
and no other are useful in peace and war, ' '*'^ would have 
us understand contests as having reference to physical 
contests only. In another instance he says : ' ' Bodily exer- 
cise when compulsory does no harm, but knowledge which 
is acquired under compulsion has no hold on the 
mind. . . . Do not use compulsion.""* Yet, as we may 
judge from the excerpt given above*^*^ from the Laws, he 
approves of prizes and contests. 

Fortunately for the Spartan boy there was little knowl- 
edge required, only such as was necessary, we are told. 
We have ample evidence of this in Plato 's Dialogues and 
Laws, in Xenophon and Pausanius. In Greater Hippias, 
Socrates is speaking with Hippias who has just returned 
from Laconia. He says the Lacedaemonians are not in- 
terested in mathematics and astronomy, harmonics and 
letters but in ' ' the genealogies of heroes and of men, the 
founding of cities and archaeology in general. They are 
so curious in these subjects that I am obliged to study 
them on purpose. ' ""* 

At the age of thirty, the Spartan boy reached his ma- 
jority and from henceforth political battles, wild bear 
hunts, and actual warfare, developed further the fighting 
instinct. Besides, a system of lifelong strife between 



62 Piut. Life of Lycurg. (in "Ideal Commonwealths"). London, 1887, 
p. 201. 
G3 Laws, VII, 796. 

64 Rep., VII, 536. 

65 Cf., page 29. 

66 Greater Hip. Whewell's transl.. Vol., II, p. 93. 



COMPARED WITH THE CHRISTIAN IDEAL 31 

groups of individuals was instituted. One group was 
always on the alert to discover in members of the oppos- 
ing group some slip of conduct. ''And so is set on foot 
that strife in which . . . each against other and in sepa- 
rate camps, the rival parties train for victory. ' '*'' 

Aristotle, commenting on the almost wholly physical 
character of Spartan education, says: "The Lacedae- 
monians make their children fierce (brutal) by painful 
labor, considering this to be chiefly useful to inspire them 
with courage and even with respect to this, they do not 
thus attain its end ; for we do not find either in other ani- 
mals, or in other nations, that courage necessarily attends 
the most cruel, but rather the milder. For there are many 
people who are eager both to kill men and to devour 
human flesh, as the Achaeans, . . . but are men of no 
courage.'"'* Though Plato modeled his ideal Republic 
upon Sparta, yet he finds fault with Lycurgus for making 
war the sole aim. In his Laws he first leads his hearers 
up to the acknowledgment that "War, whether external 
or civil is not best, and the end of either is to be depre- 
cated; but peace with one another and good will are 
best." Then he draws the following conclusion as natu- 
rally embodied in the above premise, "No one can te a 
true statesman, who looks only or first of all to external 
warfare ; nor will he ever be a sound legislator who orders 
peace for the sake of war, and not war for the sake of 
peace. '"'^ He continues further, "Tell me were not the 
syssitia and then the gymnasia invented by your legis- 
lator with a view to war ? . . . (Meg.) Hunting is third 
in order. ... I think I can get as far as the fourth head, 
which is the frequent endurance of pain, exhibited among 
us Spartans in certain hand-to-hand fights ; also in steal- 
ing with the prospect of getting a good beating. . . . 
Marvelous, too, is the endurance which our citizens show 



67 Xen. Pol. Lac, IV, 3. 
«8Pol., 1338b. 
69 Laws, I, 628. 



32 SOME MOTIVES IN PAGAN EDUCATION 

in the naked exercises, contending against the savage 
heat; and there are many similar practices, to speak of 
which in detail would be endless.'"" The interpolator 
then inquires whether courage is to be defined as a combat 
against fears and pains only or against desires and pleas- 
ures, and against flatterers, and shows that the man who 
is overcome by pleasure is inferior in a more disgraceful 
sense than he who is overcome by pain. Then he points 
out the lack of foresight in the lawgivers of Crete and 
Lacedaemon in legislating to meet attacks which come 
only from one side, the pain side, and in neglecting to 
provide for attacks from the pleasure side.'^ 

This summary would seem to strike at the roots of the 
cause of the failure of that splendidly organized system 
of Spartan Education. The system was built upon the 
assumption that training from early youth in external 
restraint and endurance would yield a nation of warriors 
and patroits. It did not do this because only the body had 
been trained while the heart and the mind had not been 
attuned to intelligent service. Plato says, and we agree 
with him, that pleasure-pain are the first perceptions of 
children and the forms under which virtue and vice are 
originally presented to them. "Now, I mean by edu- 
cation that training that is given by suitable habits to 
the first instincts of children; when pleasure and friend- 
ship and pain and hatred, are rightly planted in souls not 
yet capable of understanding the nature of them, and who 
find them after they have attained to reason in harmony 
with her. This harmony of the soul, taken as a whole, is 
virtue ; but the particular training in respect of pleasure 
and pain, which leads you always to hate what you ought 
to hate, and love what you ought to love from the begin- 
ning of life to the end, may be separated off ; and, in my 
view will be rightly called education. "'- 

70 Laws, I, 633. 

71 Cf. Laws, I, 634. 

72 Plato, Laws, H, 653. 



COMPARED WITH THE CHRISTIAN IDEAL 33 

In the Spartan system of training there was no thought 
purposely given, so far as we can determine, to intelli- 
gent response to pleasure stimuli in a way neither detri- 
mental to the individual himself nor to society. He was 
taught only to inhibit nature's response to pain by a 
gradual process of hardening. That the Spartan system 
failed in what it aimed at is a fact of history. "See that 
thou be ever best and above all others distinguished,"'^ 
might as a working model develop warriors, perhaps even 
citizens, efficient enough, if measured by the standards 
of the times, but could scarcely do more. That it did not 
do this, the unrest and discontent and frequent political 
changes in Sparta show. One reason for this is explained 
by Aristotle : ' * Neither is a city to be deemed happy or 
a legislator to be praised because he trains his children 
to conquer and obtain dominion over his neighbors, for 
there is great evil in this. On a similar principle any 
citizen who could would obtain power in his own state."'* 
He expresses surprise that people '^ commend the Lace- 
daemonian Constitution and praise the legislator for 
making war the sole aim . . . but surely they (the Lace- 
daemonians) are not happy now that their empire has 
passed away, nor was their legislator right."" The 
inadequacy of the system seems evident from the fact 
that only so long as they were the sole people who de- 
voted themselves to prolonged exercise, were they supe- 
rior. Later, they were inferior both in gymnastic con- 
tests and in war. Their only superiority according to 
Aristotle was not due to their superior training but to the 
fact that they alone were trained. Their training did not 
produce well-rounded men and failed in that which alone 
is sought, the conservation of the state.^** Even when 
Sparta was victorious in war and had attained supremacy 

73 Homer, II. VI, 208. 

74 Pol., 1333b. 

75 Ibid. 

76 Cf. Aris. Pol., 1338b. 



34 SOME MOTIVES IN PAGAN' EDUCATION 

over Athens she did not know how to rule intelligently 
and successfully. Her supremacy, in Greece, conse- 
quently, lasted only thirty-four years. And during this 
time the country was made so helpless by the forced dis- 
solution of any league or compact aiming at the preserva- 
tion of Greek unity that the country, politically, never 
overcame the deleterious effects of Sparta's short period 
of dominance. 

The drawbacks in this elaborate system of training 
would seem to be first, this — already pointed out from 
Aristotle's Politics," and discussed in Plato's Repub- 
lic^® — the brutalizing effect of almost exclusive training 
for strength of body. Another factor tending to produce 
the same effect was their scourgings aiming at teaching 
endurance.^*^ A third factor was the play given to pas- 
sion in their various contests, particularly in the hand-to- 
hand fights referred to by Pausanius,®** Cicero,®' and 
others. Then the moral effects of disregarding property 
rights by encouraging or sanctioning petty thefts in order 
to develop cunning and alertness in time of war must 
have lead to undesirable consequences. A further objec- 
tion would seem to be this that their elaborate system of 
espionage made the free moral act of an isolated indi- 
vidual an impossibility; there was only one conscience, 
the state's. The Spartan boy was hedged in on all sides 
so as never, it seems to us, to have had an opportunity 
to do the right for right's sake. There was no oppor- 
tunity for willing obedience to law from a sense of honor 
and a knowledge of duty. It was, as we said before, a 
training exclusively from without. Still another danger 
which Aristotle calls attention to in his Politics and which 
we have mentioned above®" was that being trained to con- 



77 cf. p. 31. 

78 Cf. Ill, 410, ff. 

79 Cf. p. 27 above. 

80 Cf. p. 29 above. 

81 Cf. p. 29 above. 

82 Cf. p. 33 above. 



COMPARED WITH THE CHRISTIAN IDEAL 35 

quer simply and obtain dominion over their neighbors, 
there was nothing to prevent them from trying to obtain 
power in their own state. The result was perpetual jeal- 
ousy and political intrigue. 

Another result which we would expect to find anywhere 
under similar circumstances was that the Spartan was 
wholly unable to adjust his life to conditions outside of 
Sparta. Consequently, when away from Sparta, he was 
more disposed to fall into lawlessness than one less 
trained. ' * The obedience to law that had been inculcated 
in the vale of the Eurotas, was forgotten as soon as the 
Spartan general passed into a wider field : the simplicity 
and scorn of luxury which the whole of his life tended to 
produce, was changed into venality and greed for gold 
almost unparalleled . . . the duties of a man to his state 
were diligently taught; the duties of man to man were 
passed over in silence. "^^ 



83 Wilkins, Nat. Ed. in Greece. N. Y., 1911, p. 42. 



CHAPTEK V 

ATHENIAN TRAINING 

The main difference between the training of the 
Athenian and that of the Spartan is pointed out by 
Thncydides®* in the Periclean Oration. "And in the 
matter of education, whereas they (the Spartans) from 
early youth are always undergoing laborious exercises 
which are to make them brave, we live at ease and are 
equally ready to face the perils which they face ... If 
then we jDrefer to face danger with a light heart but with- 
out laborious training, and with a courage that is gained 
by habit and not enforced by law, are we not greatly the 
gainers? Since we do not anticipate the pain, although 
when the hour comes, we can be as brave as those who 
never allow themselves to rest ; and thus, too, our city is 
equally admirable in peace and in war. ... I say that 
Athens is the school of Hellas, and that the individual 
Athenian in his own person seems to have the powers of 
adapting himself to the most varied form of action with 
the utmost versatility and grace. This is no passing and 
idle word, but truth and fact. . . . For in the hour of 
trial Athens alone among her contemporaries is greater 
than her fame. . . ."^^•' 

In Athens, as we know, geographic conditions made it 
tolerably easy for an army to offer effective resistance to 
an enemy. Then, this state was not in the position of 
conqueror to an overwhelmingly large number of con- 
ciuered, as was the case in Sparta. Consequently, train- 
ing for warfare was not so imperative. Besides, the 
glory of the Spartan was identified with the glory of his 
country, at least in theory ; the glory of the Athenian was 
to a very great extent a personal matter. Rossignal sums 
up the relation of the individual to the state in Athens 



84 Transl. Jowett, Bk. II, 39 ff. 
36 



COMPARED WITH THE CHRISTIAN IDEAL 37 

in the following words : ' ' Pour trouver im peiiple, qui ait 
dignement compris la destinee humaine, qui ait seconde 
de tous ses efforts la liberte de 1 'esprit et le mouvement 
de 1 'intelligence, il faut arriver aux Athenians, et aux 
Athenians gouvernes par la legislation de Solon. C'est 
alors que I'homme s'elanee dans toutes les voies, qui 
s'ouvrent a I'activite de son genie. Les arts deja connus 
sont perf ectionnes ; on en invente de nouveaux ; et le seul 
aliment qui nourrit cette ardeur, c'est 1 'emulation, et le 
suffrage d'un peuple eclaire. La patrie n'est plus cette 
maitresse imperieuse et jalouse, qui commandait le sacri- 
fice de toutes les volentes ; c 'est un centre commun 
d 'amour enthouiaste et libre pour le culte des memes 
dieux, 1 'observation des memes lois, I'inviolabilite du 
foyer domestique, la dignite de chacun, I'honneur et I'in- 
dependance de tous. "®^ The Ionian Athenian esteemed as 
of first importance beauty of form and a certain mental 
development which might be termed grace or perhaps, 
more correcth^, subtlety of intellect. The Dorian Spartan 
esteemed only physical strength and endurance and terse- 
ness of speech. 

In Athens there was no state system of education. An 
undifferentiated state system such as existed in Sparta 
would have been foreign to the genius of this people. The 
Athenian child was trained in the home by the nurse and 
the mother until he was about seven, — the age varied 
somewhat. "The children of the rich begin to go to 
school sooner and leave off later."-*' These seven years 
were pleasurable, we judge from the frequent mention of 
toys, such as the rattle, the rocking horse, etc., and from 
this further circumstance that cradle songs seem to have 
been sung to soothe the child. "And the woman, touch- 
ing the heads of her children, spake thus: 'Sleep, my 
babes, a sweet sleep, and one from which you may wake ; 

85 De L'Education chez les Anciens. Paris, 1888, p. 25 ff. 

86 Plato, Prot., 326. 



38 SOME MOTIVES IN I'AGAN EDI'CATION 

sleep, my lives, two brothers, secure children, happily 
may you sleep, and happily arrive at morn. ' ' '" 

Yet there seems to have been strict supervision during 
this period. Plato, in speaking of Athenian education, 
says "Education and admonition begin in the first years 
of childhood, and last to the very end of life. Mother, and 
nurse and father and tutor are quarrelling about the im- 
provement of the child as soon as ever he is able to under- 
stand them: he cannot say or do anything without their 
setting forth to him that this is just and that is unjust ; 
this is honorable, that is dishonorable ; this is holy, that is 
unholy ; do this and abstain from that. And if he obeys, 
w^ell and good ; if not, he is straightened by threats and 
blows like a piece of warped wood. ' '*^ 

When the school age had arrived, the child was placed 
under the care of a pedagogue, usually a slave, and was 
conducted by him daily to one of the many ''private- 
venture" schools. His first teacher outside the home was 
the grammatist and his first books, as pointed out above,^^ 
were Homer and Hesiod. Strabo, together with the other 
authorities mentioned above'"' in this connection, gives 
evidence of this. "The ancients define poetry as a primi- 
tive philosophy, guiding our life from infancy, and pleas- 
antly regulating our morals, our tastes, and our 
actions. . . . On this account the earliest lessons which 
the citizens of Greece convey to children are from the 
poets; certainly not alone for the purpose of amusing 
their minds, but for their instruction."^^ Laurie is of the 
opinion that "The tales of the gods which Plato would 
have banished from education were unquestionably an 
expression of the riotous and imaginative spirit of the 
Greeks, and could not possibly have influenced their lives 

87 Theoc. Idyll, XXIV. 

88 Prot., 325. 

89 p. 13ff. 
9f Ibid. 

ill Strabo, I, 3. 



COMPARED WITH THE CHRISTIAN IDBAt, 39 

to virtue."^" The evidence brought forward in chapter 
second pointed to the same conclusions, it would seem. 

If there was a large measure of freedom in Athenian 
education as compared with Spartan, yet the state set 
some restrictions and made some prescriptions. Music 
and gymnastics were prescribed for all. Socrates, in the 
Dialogues of Plato, says ; "Were not the laws, which have 
charge of education, right in commanding your father to 
train you in music and gymnastics I "'^^ It would seem 
from both Aeschines and Plato that the law ordained 
first, that the curricula of the various schools should con- 
tain both music and gymnastics; secondly, that these 
schools should not open before sunrise and should close 
before sunset. The Areopagus, as we know, had super- 
vision of all the schools.^* We think, however, basing our 
opinion upon the complaints of Isocrates, that this duty 
was not zealously fulfilled. 

Aristotle finds fault with the freedom regarding mat- 
ters educational allowed in Athens and thinks that since 
the whole city has one and the same end, that education 
should be the same for all. Yet, he thinks that education 
should not be of the restricted kind given at Sparta for 
"to be always seeking after the useful does not become 
free and exalted souls. ' '"^ 

About the age of twelve, gj^mnastic training, which up 
to this time had accompanied literary instruction, began 
to be given precedence. Music also was broadened in its 
scope so as to include instruction on the zithar. The gym- 
nastic exercises seem to have consisted of wrestling, 
throwing the discus, practicing the pancratium, and jump- 
ing. There were also exercises in swimming and in boat- 
racing.''*' In all of these exercises, competition was a large 

'•'2 Laurie, Prechrist. Ed. Lond., 1904, p. 217. 

93 Plato, Crito, 50 E; Cf. Prot. 325 E; Aeschines, Timarch., 9, 10. 

9* Cf. Isoc. Areop., 17c. 

95 Pol. 1338b; Cf. Plato, Rep., VII. 525ff. 

96 Cf. Paus. II, XXXV, 1. 



40 SOME MOTIVES IN PAGAN EDUCATION 

factor in maintaining attention. There seems to have 
been none of that harshness of discipline characteristic of 
Spartan training. For, *'Not by her discipline, like 
Sparta and Rome, but by the unfailing charm of her 
gracious influence did Athens train her children."'-*^ 

The aim of the gymnastic training in Athens seems to 
have been to develop freedom, agility, and harmonious 
development of the body. At no time did the Athenians 
try to develop strength merely or physical endurance. 
They worshipped,''^ we might almost say, bodily per- 
fection. Therefore, anything tending to disfigure the 
body even temporarily was reprehensible. But, through 
their over attention to bodily exercises, they failed often 
to attain that for which they strove most. Aristotle, no 
doubt, had in mind the Athenians when he says: ''Of 
these states, which in our own day seem to take the great- 
est care of children, some aim at producing in them an 
athletic habit, but they only injure their forms and stunt 
their growth.'"'^ 

At eighteen, the young man exchanged the palaestra 
for the gymnasium and devoted the two following years 
to exclusive bodily training, military and gymnastic, as 
a final preparation for complete citizenship. ^'^^ There 
were three public gymnasia in Athens and we are told 
by Xenophon that there were also numerous private gym- 
nasia. ''Rich men have in many cases private gymnasia 
and baths with dressing rooms and the people take care 
to have built at the public expense a number of palaestra, 
dressing rooms and bathing establishments for its own 
special use, and the mob got the benefit of the majority 
of these rather than the select few or well-to-do. "^"^ 

The Athenian admiration for perfection of bodily form 

97 Wilkins, Nat. Ed. in Greece. N. Y., 1911, p. 94. Cf. Newman, Hist. 
Sketches, p. 40. 

98 Cf. Hdt, V. 47. 
99Aris. Pol., 1338b. 

100 Cf. Aris. Const. Athens, Traiisl. Poste. Lond., 1891, p. 66 ff. 
101 Xen. Pol. Ath., II, 10. 



COMPARED WITH THE CHRISTIAN IDEAL 41 

soon went to extremes. About the middle of the fifth 
century, B. C, much time came to be given over to train- 
ing in the technique of athletics. Soon this resulted in 
the development of that one-sidedness criticized above. ^**- 
Athletics became an end in itself. The Athenian con- 
ception of highest future bliss was life in a region where, 
"Some take their joy in horses, some in gymnasia, some 
in draughts. "^'^" The successful athlete was a hero in the 
eyes of his countr\^nen and as we noted above,"'* was 
even worshipped. Athletics, therefore, was an alluring 
profession to the ordinary Athenian. "It is true, the 
prize in the Olympian Games (was only) a crown made 
of branches of a wild olive ; in the Isthmian, of branches 
of the pine tree ; in the Nemean, of parsley ; in the Pythian, 
of laurel; and with us in our Panhellenic Games, a jar of 
oil, made from the olive consecrated to Minerva. ' '"'^ The 
material reward received from the state, as we see, was 
insignificant; at the hands of his countrymen, the victor 
was more amply recommended. He was admitted to the 
city through a breach in the wall like a conqueror, statues 
were hewn in his honor, the front seat was assigned to 
him in the agora. In Sparta, on the contrary, the victor 
was simply rewarded by being given the right to fight 
next to the king. 

The almost childish extravagance of judgment to which 
Athenian love of beauty of form led this people is well 
expressed in a war-song of Tyrtaeus: "It is a shame for 
an old man to lie slain in the front of battle, the body 
stripped and exposed . . . because an old man's body 
cannot be beautiful. But to the young all things are 
seemly as long as the goodly bloom of youth is on him. A 
sight for men to marvel at, for women to love while he 



102 cf. p. 23. 

i<j3 Pindar, Fragment. 

104 Cf. p. 40. 

105 Luc. Anach. Transl. West, (in Br. poets; Pindar). Lond., 1810, 
p. 225. 



42 SO^JE MOTIVES IN PAGAN EDUCATION 

livetli; beautiful, too, when fallen in the front of bat- 
tle.'"" Here, their love for perfection of body and the de- 
sire for the admiration it called forth were appealed to 
as incentives to fearless fighting in the hardest quarters. 
There is anticipated recompense in the thought that the 
body will be an object of admiration even when dead. 
This incentive pales into childish insignificance when 
compared with the nobility of the motives usually pro- 
posed to any army before battle, for instance, duty, 
patriotism, etc. 

If the Spartan system failed through over-severity, the 
Athenian system would, it seems, have been more ef- 
fective had it enforced a little sterner control. It appears 
to be a platitude that * 'for the majority of men something 
more is needed than the simple charms of knowledge to 
constrain them to the steady and strenuous pursuit which 
is needful to achieve success.'""^ The eagerness of the 
Athenian youth of the fifth and the succeeding centuries 
to "purchase" their knowledge from the Sophists, thus 
trying to escape the labor of ordinary schoolroom meth- 
ods, urge us to this conclusion. Then, their worship of 
beauty arose from their identification of beauty and hap- 
piness with goodness. This, as we know, led to gross 
abuses. Excessive care of the body and the ''love of the 
beautiful became the love of the sensual ; and the pursuit 
of that which is most alluring lasts, even when goodness 
has lost her power to be held as such. ' ""* There was no 
thought of marital integrity in Athens, as we know. 

There was still another danger and a danger against 
which the Athenian never learned to guard himself ef- 
fectively. The great liberty their system gave to the 
individual made him an easy prey to philosophical and 
educational novelties. The name Sophist, in derivation 
and in early significance so honorable, came to mean a 



106 Tyrtaeus, I. 

107 Wilkins, Nat. Ed. in Greece. N. Y., 1911, p. 96. 

108 Ibid., p. 97. 



COMPARED WITH THE CHRISTIAN IDEAL , 43 

class of brilliant but, it would seem, shallow and unscrup- 
ulous men who, according to Aristophanes and others, 
were supposed to be able to teach the youth how to argue 
so as to justify anything. Eager for this short road to 
knowledge, the youth, he complained, refused to go to 
school and were, on the whole, too clever to accept any- 
thing on authority. They are characterized as a pale, 
sickly group of researchers on a large number of questions 
of no importance. A typical question mentioned by Aris- 
tophanes^"'' is ''how many times the length of its own foot 
does a flea jumpf" Plato in his Apology tells, through 
the mouth of Socrates, of Evenus, the Parian, who bar- 
gained to teach the whole duties of a man and a citizen 
for five minae."° Aristophanes ' statements are, no doubt, 
satirical exaggerations, but based upon fact; Plato's 
criticism of the Sophists can be taken more seriously. 
Turner says: "In the instruction which they gave they 
set no value upon objective truth; indeed, the ideal at 
which they aimed was the art of making the worse seem 
the better cause, and vice versa. Readiness of exposition 
and presentation of arguments in a specious manner were 
all that they pretended to teach.'"" 

It would seem from the frequent changes in philosophi- 
cal beliefs as well as from the testimony of St. Luke 
chronicling St. Paul's reproof of the Athenians,"' 
Plato,"'"' Aristophanes, and others, that the typical 
Athenian was a volatile, intellectually spasmodic man. 
Laurie says : " I think we must admit that the Greeks, and 
above all the Athenians, were light-minded and frivolous, 
easily swayed hither and thither, vain, of a shallow, be- 
cause merely aesthetic, morality; talkative, untruthful, 
scheming, and pleasure-loving, with a strong tendency to 
licentiousness. Brilliant comrades, I should say they 
were doubtful friends.""* 



lov Cf. Clouds, Transl. Hickie (in "Worlds Gt. Bk's.), N. Y., 1900, p. 
299. 

11" Auology, 20. 

111 Hist. Phil. N. Y., 1903, p. 71. 

112 Cf. Acts XVII, 19-23. 

113 Cf. Plato, Prot., 318-320. 

ii-i Pre-Christ, Ed. Lond., 1904, p. 217. 



CHAPTER VI 

ROME 

Excudent alii spirantia mollius aera, 

Credo equidem, vivos ducent de marmore vultus. 

Orabunt caussus melius, caelique meatus 

Describent radio et surgentia sidera dicent; 

Tu regere imperio populos, Romane, memento; 

Hae tibi erunt artes; pacisque imponere morem 

Parcere subjectis et debellare superbos.ns 

We pass from the city-state, Athens, to the old Roman 
kingdom with the same feeling one might have in rous- 
ing one's self from rapt attention to some world-famed 
symphony orchestra to find its notes dying into the fierce, 
yet meaning ejaculations and frantic gestures and tense 
earnestness of the stock-exchange. By nature the Roman 
was practical, constantly asking what is the value of this ; 
for an Athenian to attach any utilitarian value to ac- 
quired knowledge was to cease to be an Athenian and to 
become a slave/^" The Spartan and the Roman have more 
bonds of similarity but in the former we have the indi- 
vidual lost sight of in the larger unit, the state ; in the lat- 
ter, we have the personality of the individual dominant 
while all the individuals are united by a sacred bond, the 
common good. 

What the Laws of Solon and of Lycurgus were to the 
Athenian and the Spartan, the Laws of the Twelve Tables 
were to the Roman. If the Greeks aimed at being ' ' speak- 
ers of words and doers of deeds," the Roman ideal was a 
man possessing practical prudence, and fair dealing in 
his business relations. It may further be remarked that 
while the Greek idealized justice, the Roman legislated 
about it and practiced it. 

Unlike the Spartan father and to a much greater ex- 
tent than the Athenian, the Roman father exercised the 



115 Vergil, Aeneid. Vi. 847. 

116 Cf. Aristotle and the Anc. Ed. Ideals, Davidson. N. Y., 1892. 
Chap. IV. Cf. Aris. Pol. 1338 b. Plato, Rep. VII, 525 ff. 

44 



COMPARED WITH THE CHRISTIAN IDEAL 45 

light of parent to care for bis offspring's physical de- 
velopment and moral and intellectual training. The 
Paterfamilias had the power of life and death over his 
children. This would imply on the part of the child sub- 
mission and obedience to the stage of servility, if neces- 
sary. The Laws of the Twelve Tables, Table IV, make 
provision for the immediate destruction of deformed off- 
spring, in the first clause. The second gives to the father 
control over his children with right during his whole life 
to imprison, scourge, keep in rustic labor in chains, to sell 
or slay, even though they may be in the enjoyment of high 
state offices. The only release from this patria potestas 
was "three consecutive sales of the son by the father. "^^' 
Table Five provides that the testament of the father 
shall be law as to all provisions concerning his property 
and tutelage thereof. Hence the child had no rights, per- 
sonal or property, that the father was bound to respect. 
During the Old Roman Period, then, since this right of 
the father was effective in letter as in spirit, the father, 
and to a less extent the mother, determined the kind and 
the degree of education. But though this education was 
of an individual nature, the same ideal to produce the 
practical man of affairs prevailed. 

There are few reliable sources of information for the 
Old Roman Period of Education. Our information must 
be drawn entirely as to primary sources from the 
''Twelve Tables" but there are, over and above, mam- 
references to prevalent practices during this period in the 
writings of the succeeding period; the content of their 
system is summed up in Cicero 's words, ' ' Eas artes quae 
efficiant ut usui civitati simus.'"'* The training was 
sturdy according to the mos maiorum, and no Roman 
departed far from what his father and his father 's father 
had done. The patriarchal system, as it might be called, 

iiTFragm. Laws of the Twelve Tables. Table IV. 
118 De Rep. I., 33. 



46 SOME MOTIVES IN PAGAN EDUCATION 

necessitated by the patria potestas would make it possible 
to perpetuate ideals. While there was no state control, 
becomingness and "pietas" tended to conservatism. 
Pliny/^^ the younger, relates that, ' ' By the institution of 
our ancestors, it was wisely provided that the young 
should learn from the old, not only by precept, but by 
their own observation, how they were to behave in that 
sphere in which they were one day themselves to move ; 
while these in turn, transmitted the same mode of instruc- 
tion to their children . . . the father of each child was 
his instructor upon these occasions, or if he had none, 
some person of years and dignity supplied the place of 
father. ' ' 

As Roman education in the old days was essentially 
doing rather than acquiring theoretical knowledge in the 
modern sense, we may conclude that incentives to study 
were not sought out consciously. Imitation and the im- 
pulse to do must have kept all but the laziest alert, yet we 
know from references in works of the succeeding period 
that discipline was severely enforced. 

It is a matter of some dispute, usually settled nega- 
tively, as to whether there were any schools (ludi) during 
this period. Reference is made indirectly to these schools 
by Livy, Dionysius and Plutarch.^-'' Livy and Dionysius 
mention them in connection with the story of Virginia, 
who was seized as she came down into the forum, ''for 
there were schools there" (Ibi namque in Tabernis lit- 
terarum ludi erant) ; Plutarch speaks of Romulus and Re- 
mus going to school at Gabii. However, we would hardly be 
justified in drawing an inference from the statement of Plu- 
tarch since in another passage the same writer expressly 
states that Spurius Carvilius was the first to open a school 
at Rome. A compromise is sometimes made by some who 
think there were ludi in Rome before 250 B. C, but that 



119 Epistulae, VIII, 14. 

i2opiut. Romulus VI. Cf. Livy III, 44; Dionysius, XI, 24. 



COMPARED WITH THE CHRISTIAN IDEAL 47 

Spurius Carvilius was the first one to charge fees. It is, 
however, an open question leaning most often to the 
opinion that there were no schools, since, as the uphold- 
ers of the opinion remark, ' ' as long as no national litera- 
ture existed, there could be no demand for schools in 
which it was taught. ' "^^ 

The Greek had his multitude of gods, but the Roman, 
until he came under Greek influence, built no temple and 
chiseled no god. The centre of his devotion was the 
family hearth and his libations were poured out to the 
Penates who cared for the larder and to the Lares who, 
being the spirits of the departed of the same family, 
would have special interest in its perpetuity and pros- 
perity. Thus religion, no less than education and law, 
tended to weld closely together the different members of 
the family. The Roman matron in the older period 
stands for almost all the virtues that we deem noblest and 
best in woman, and the Roman child trained under the 
eye of such a mother become vir, honestus et prudens. 

But the conservatism of the Roman gradually yielded 
to external influences, principally Hellenism, but not 
Hellenism in its day of glory for, as Mommsen says, in 
substance, the Athens which Rome came to know was no 
more the Athens of Sophocles and Plato. The tide of 
Hellenism had been gradually rising over Roman land. 
Increasing commerce with the Greeks of Magna Graecia, 
Sicily and the Mediterranean Islands had made the Greek 
Language a sort of lingua media of commercial relations. 
Greek f reedmen or slaves came to be employed in the ludi 
and a conversational knowledge of Greek became a com- 
panion, on the curriculum, of the Twelve Tables. About 
250 B. C, Livius Andronicus translated the Odyssey 
into Latin, thus making a beginning of Latin literature 
while intensifying the tide of Hellenism. 

The Roman, however, though conquered b}' Greek cul- 



121 Wilkins, "Rom. Ed.," Camb., 1905, p. 9. 



48 SOME MOTIVES IN PAGAN EDUCATION 

ture, never became a good Greek, for, to quote Laurie, 
**He remained to the last prosaic and practical." In the 
Art of Poetry, Horace contrasts unfavorably the prac- 
tical turn of the Roman mind with the aesthetic bent of 
the Greek. "To the Greeks the muse has given genius, to 
the Greeks ambitious of nothing but praise, the power to 
speak with eloquence. The boys of Rome learn by long 
calculation to divide a pound into a hundred parts. 'Let 
Albinus ' son tell me what remains if from five ounces one 
is taken. ' If you have been able to answer ' the third of a 
pound,' well done; you will be able to look after your 
estate. Add an ounce, what is the sum 1 ' Half a pound. ' 
When we have imbued their minds with the canker and 
care of gain, do we hope that they will compose poems 
worthy of preservation, worthy of being pressed in cases 
of cypress!" 

Graiis ingenium, Graiis dedit ore rotundo 
Musa loqui, praeter laudem nuUius avaris. 
Romani pueri longis rationibus assem 
Discunt in partes centum diducere. Dicat 
Filius Albini; si de quincunce remota est 
Uncia, quid superat? Poteras dixisse. Triens. Eu! 
Rem poteris servare tuam. Redit uncia, quid fit? 
Semis. At haec animos aerugo et cura peculi 
Quum semel imbuerit, speramus carmina fingi 
Posse linenda cedro et levi servanda cupresso?i22 

It was, of course, not until a century later that the 
Roman schools became thoroughly Hellenized. The con- 
quest of Greece led to the introduction of Greek ideals 
and ideas and such an alarming change did this effect 
that a decree of the senate, 161 B. C, forbade Greek Phil- 
osophers and Rhetoricians to be any longer tolerated in 
Rome. '*In the consulship of Gains Fannius Strabo, 
and Marcus Valerius Messala, the praeter Marcus Pom- 
ponius moved the senate that an act be passed respecting 
Philosophers and Rhetoricians. In this matter they de- 
creed as follows: 'It shall be lawful for M. Pomponius, 

122 Ep. ad Piso, 325 et seq. 



COMPARED WITH THE CHRISTIAN IDEAL 49 

tlie praetor, to take such measures and make such pro- 
visions as the good of the republic and the duty of his 
office require, that no Philosophers or Rhetoricians be 
suffered at Rome.' 

''After some interval, the censor Cnaeus Domitius 
Aenobarbus and Lucius Lucinius Crassus issued the fol- 
lowing edict upon the subject: 'It is reported to us that 
certain persons have instituted a new kind of discipline ; 
that our youth resort to their schools ; that they have as- 
sumed the title of Latin Rhetoricians; and that young 
men waste their time there for whole days together. Our 
ancestors have ordained what instruction it is fitting 
their children should receive, and what schools they 
should attend. These novelties, contrary to the instruc- 
tions of our ancestors, we neither approve nor do they 
seem to us good. Therefore it appears to be our duty 
that we should notify our judgment both to those who 
keep such schools and those who are in the practice of fre- 
quenting them, that they meet our disapprobation.' "^-^ 
This decree, while noteworthy as exhibiting the great 
strides Hellenism was making, by no means marks a step 
in its retrogression. 

We must now look into these Hellenized schools to see 
what incentives to study were employed. We note at 
once that wherever we find mention made of a teacher in 
any primary source he is almost always sure to be a lover 
of the rod. In other words, at least in the ludi, the boy 
led an uneasy life. We have proof of the severe disci- 
pline of the Roman school from both brush and pen. A 
mural decoration at Pompeii shows a Roman boy receiv- 
ing the scutica on his bare back. Two of his fellows hold 
him imprisoned while the teacher, evidently, administers 
the flogging. A graffito from the walls of the palace of 
the Caesars shows an ass tied to a post. The mind is 
aided in its interpretation of the significance by the 

123 Suetonius, De. Rhet., I. 



50 SOME MOTIVES IN PAGAN EDUCATION 

legend appended in the words of the Roman schoolboy: 
''Labor on, little ass, just as I have labored, and may it 
be of profit to you." In fact, wherever we meet the 
Roman teacher we are prepared to meet harshness and 
force. Horace 's master, Orbilius, who took such pains to 
impress old Laevius' verses with his ferrule that they 
shall never be forgotten is, we judge, just one of many.'-* 

Non equidem insector, delendave carmina Laevi 
Esse reor, memini quae plagosum mini parvo. 
Orbilium dictare. 

Suetonius speaks of the same Orbilius having been a 
soldier and after the war, it would seem, he returned to his 
studies, became a praeceptor and later came to Rome 
in this capacity. He also pays the tribute of his scorn 
to his sour temper. Not only Horace and Suetonius but 
Domitius Marsus make mention of this master 's rod : " Si 
quos Orbilius Ferula scutiaque cecidit."* 

But Plautus' Bacchides is one of the earliest evidences 
extant of the severity of the Roman master. He puts into 
the mouth of Lydus, addressing Philo, the following, in 
substance : First, he reminds him that for the first twenty 
years of his ( Philo 's) life he had not even this much lib- 
erty, to move his foot out of the house even a finger's 
length away from his tutor. ''Before the rising of the 
sun had you not come to school for exercise, no small 
punishment would you have had at the hands of the mas- 
ter of the school. . . . Then when from the Hippodrome 
and school of exercise you had returned home, clad in 
your belted frock, upon a stool of your master would you 
sit; and there when you were reading your book, if you 
made a mistake in a single syllable, your skin would be 
made as spotted as your nurse's gown. . . ." Philo. — 
"The manners, Lydus, now are altered." Lyd. — "That 
for my part I know well. For formerly a man used to re- 



124 Horace, Ep., II., I, 70. 
* Suetonius, De Gram., IX. 



COMPARED WITH THE CHRISTIAN IDEAL 51 

ceive public honors by tbe votes of the people before he 
ceased to be obedient to one appointed tutor. But nowa- 
days, before he is seven years old, if you touch a boy with 
your hand, at once the boy breaks the tutor's head with 
his tablet. When you go to complain to the father, thus 
says the father to the child: 'Be you my own dear boy 
since you can defend yourself from an injury. ' The tutor 
then is called for — 'Hello! you old good-for-nothing, 
don't you be touching the child for the reason that he has 
behaved badly. ' ' '^'^ 

Plautus probably wrote about 200 B. C. or earlier. We 
see, then, that even at that date the authority of the 
Greek pedagogue, usually a slave, was not respected by 
the Roman child, but it would scarcely be correct, how- 
ever, to infer that all tutors were treated thus badly, more 
especially since almost all the writers from Plautus to 
Juvenal, when reference is made to the school, dwell upon 
its severity. Juvenal speaks of leaving school as with- 
drawing the hand from the rod.^-*^ 

Yet we infer that in some cases at least there was a 
striking contrast between the old severe discipline of the 
Roman father and the Roman mother and the discipline 
of the schools. Tacitus in his Dialogue concerning Ora- 
tory, the scene of which is laid in the year 75 A. D., draws 
a striking contrast between the rigid discipline of the 
older period when care was taken that all was done with 
propriety consuetudine maiorum nostrorum, when the 
diversions even of the children were conducted with re- 
serve and sanctity of manners, and the laxer methods of 
the new. ' ' Thus it was that Cornelia, the mother of the 
Gracci, superintended the education of her illustrious 
issue. It was thus that Aurelia trained up Julius Caesar 
and thus Atia formed Augustus. ' ' He then bemoans the 
fact that at that dav the child was committed to the 



125 piaut. Bacch, Act III., Scene III. 

i-« Juv. I, 15. "Et nos ergo manum ferulae subduximus." 



52 SOME MOTIVES IN PAGAN EDUCATION 

care of a Greek chamber-maid and a slave or two and 
that throughout the house no one cares what he says or 
does in his presence and, speaking of the praeceptors, 
themselves, he says, ' ' For it is not by establishing a strict 
discipline, or by giving proofs of their genius that this 
order of men gain pupils, but by fawning and flattery.'"" 

The value of criticism in keeping one on the alert is 
pointed out by Tacitus in another paragraph, — "For you 
are aware that a solid and lasting reputation of eloquence 
must be acquired by the censure of our enemies as well as 
by the applause of our friends; or rather, indeed, it is 
from the former that it derives its surest and most un- 
questioned strength and firmness.'"'* 

Unlike the Greek custom of awarding jDrizes, the 
Roman seldom offered any reward but that of praise or 
the negative reward of freedom from punishment. It is 
related, however, that Verrius Flaccus, a freedman, dis- 
tinguished himself by a new mode of teaching ; for it was 
his practice to exercise the wits of his scholars, by en- 
couraging emulation among them, not only proposing the 
subjects on which they were to write, but offering re- 
wards for those who were successful in the* contest. 
"These consisted of some ancient, handsome or rare 
book. "^-'■' This is almost a solitary instance of the award- 
ing of prizes. 

Quintilian is the first Roman to give a scientific or 
analytic exposition of method in education from the study 
of individual variations in children. He wrote, of course, 
only on the education of the orator, but in those days 
every Roman aimed at acquiring oratorical skill. He ad- 
vises a careful studv of each bov to discover his natural 



127 Tacitus, Dialog. De Oratoribus, 28-29. 

128 Ibid., 34. "Scitis enim magnam illam et duraturam eloquentiae 

famam non minus in diversis subsellis parari quam in suis; 
inde quin immo constantius sargere, ibi fidelis corroborari." 

129 Suet., De Gram., 17. 



COMPARED WITH THE CHRISTIAN IDEAL 53 

aptitudes and deficiencies. Wlien a tutor has advanced 
this far, he should study the child's mind how it is best 
managed. ''Some boys are indolent and need stimulat- 
ing ; some are restive, if commanded ; fear restrains some 
but unnerves others. " Hence the danger of trying to cast 
all in the same mould. He insists upon the need of form- 
ing good habits so that nothing be done too eagerly, dis- 
honestly and without self-control. But he disapproves 
of corporal punishment "first, because it is a disgrace 
and a punishment for slaves, and in reality (as will be 
evident if you imagine the age changed) an affront; sec- 
ondly, because, if a boy's disposition be so abject as not to 
be amended by reproof, he will be hardened like the worst 
of slaves even to stripes. ... At present the negligence 
of pedagogues seems to be made amends for in such a way 
that boys are not obliged to do what is right but are pun- 
ished whenever they have not done it."^^^ 

An effective way of inculcating good habits, as sug- 
gested by Horace, is the method of opposite example, or 
pointing out the effect of the opposite course in the per- 
sons with whom the boy came in contact ; or the method of 
example, that is pointing out some one in whom the de- 
sired virtue was dominant.^^^ 

Some of the most scathing censures of flogging in the 
field of Latin literature are found in the Epigrams of 
Martial. Very early in the morning before the crested 
cocks had broken silence, he complains, the roar of the 
savage scoldings and scourge begins, "nor is the noise 
greater in the ampitheatre when the conquering gladiator 
is applauded by his partisans. ' '^^^ In another epigram he 
urges the master "to be indulgent to your simple schol- 
ars, if you would have many a long-haired youth resort to 
your lectures, and the class seated round your critical 
table love you. . . . The days are bright, and glow under 

130 Quint. Inst, of Orat., I, III, 14. 

131 Cf. Sat. I, 4, 103. 

132 Epigrams IX, LXVIII. 



54 SOME MOTIVES IN PAGAN EDUCATION 

the flaming constellations of the Lion, and fervid July is 
ripening the teeming harvest. Let the Scythian scourge 
with its formidable thongs, such as flogged Marsyas of 
Celaenae, and the terrible cane, the schoolmaster's scep- 
tre, be laid aside, and sleep until the Ides of October. '"^^ 
The list of advocates of leniency is somewhat extended. 
We will only mention Cato in De Liberis Educandis, not 
extant, but containing, as we know, denunciations of those 
who strike women and children, Cicero, Seneca and Flac- 
cus. Still, severity continued. But a milder yet more 
irresistible influence than that of the Pagan poet or the 
Pagan moralist was soon to make itself felt. 



133 Epigrams, Mart. X. LXII. 



CHAPTER VII 

THE JEWISH PEOPLE 

"And you shall be to me a priestly kingdom 
and a holy nation. ' Ex. XIX, 6. 

At the same time that the Greeks were centering their 
educational endeavor uninterruptedly upon future field 
service, as in the case of Sparta ; upon preparation for liv- 
ing becomingly and modestly from their viewpoint, as in 
the Athenian city-state; or, again, upon preparing the 
boy to be a practical man of affairs, as in Rome ; another 
nation, though vastly inferior in those pursuits that make 
for culture, had an infinitely higher ideal in its training. 
This ideal was obedience to the behests of a supreme 
Law-giver, Who was ever personally near them, Who 
sent them chosen leaders. Whose audible voice was even 
heard at times by a multitude of people, but Who chose 
usually to give His commands indirectly through high- 
priest or prophet. This people was the chosen Hebrew 
nation. The ideal man with this people was he who most 
closely followed the Law whether written or unwritten. 

We know, however, that they failed by following the 
letter rather than the spirit of the Law and in being so 
wedded to the Promise that they rejected Him Who was 
the Fulfillment of the Promise. They were a sturdy race, 
indeed, capable of great personal sacrifice, but incapable 
of growth, because shackled by a Law which was meant to 
be only directive but which, in the extreme liberal inter- 
pretation which they gave it, became a prison house. 

'* Together with the Classical Greeks and Romans, the 
Jewish People form the celebrated historical triad uni- 
versally recognized as the source of all great civiliza- 
tions."^^* Unlike the Greeks and the Romans, the Jews, 
as we know, had a well-defined monotheistic religion. The 
predominant aim in all their education was to learn to 



i34Dubnow, Jewish Hist. Phila., 1903, p. 8. 

55 



56 SOME MOTIVES IN PAG AX EDUCATION 

practice intelligently the mandates of the Supreme Law- 
giver and to perpetuate those mandates. Jehovah was at 
one and the same time their earthly King and their 
heavenly reward to be. His mandates formed the norm of 
action alike on the battlefield, in their agricultural pur- 
suits, in the school and in the home. He was, with them, 
and rightly so, the Perfect, the All-powerful, the Holy- 
one. 

With the later Romans and the Greeks it was quite dif- 
ferent. They did not esteem their gods as perfect, but 
rather, partial, contentious, and jealous of men; not all- 
powerful, since they were subject to the fates ; and, cer- 
tainly, not holy. 

It is easy to see, then, that the ideal in Jewish educa- 
tion was much higher than in the Pagan countries 
studied, and if they fell far below their ideal, they never 
for any appreciable period of time, as a nation, lost sight 
entirely of their spiritual inheritance. At times, however, 
they had to be brought back to a sense of duty by very 
stringent means. If the Greeks were constantly seeking 
for the new, the Jews held on with stubborn tenacity to 
the old. Fearful lest they might lose sight of the Law, 
they spent the major portion of their time in teaching and 
explaining it. They built, as it has been said, a fence 
about the Law. "Blessed is the man that feareth the 
Eternal, that delighteth greatly in His commandments. 
This is the Hebrew notion of felicity; and pursued with 
passion and tenacity, this notion would not let the He- 
brew rest till, as is well known, he had at last got out of 
the Law a network of prescriptions to entrap his whole 
life, to govern every moment of it, every impulse, every 
action. "^^^ 

As with the Romans, the earliest school of the Hebrews 
was the home.''" The first distinctive schools seem to 



135 Arnold, Culture and Anarchy. Lond., 1875, p. 131 

136 Cf. Gen. XVIII, 19. 



COMPARED WITH THE CHRISTIAN IDEAL 57 

date from some time after the return from the Babylonian 
Captivity, 536 B. C. Emanuel Deutsch says, "Eighty 
years before Christ schools flourished throughout the 
length and breadth of the land ; education had been made 
compulsory. While there is not a single word for school 
to be found before the Captivity. . . .^^^ The prophets, 
however, who preached to the people, instituted schools 
or confraternities, as we know, where was taught the Law 
in its purity, but these were hardly schools in the common 
acceptation of the term. 

The discipline of the home was rigid, if not severe. In 
the Pre-Mosaic period, during the formative years of the 
race, in common with the custom of most nomadic tribes, 
it would seem that the head of the "expanded" family 
was an arbitrary sovereign.^^^ Moses, while restricting 
the abuse of parental authority, yet sanctions that the 
death penalty be pronounced against a stubborn and un- 
ruly son. This could only take place after a certain legal 
procedure, namely, accusation before the people, where, 
it would seem, both parent and child had a hearing. "If 
a man have a stubborn and unruly son, who will not hear 
the commandments of his father and mother, and being- 
corrected slighteth obedience, they will take him and 
bring him to the ancients of the city, and to the gate of 
judgment, and shall say to them : ' This our son is rebel- 
lious and stubborn, he slighteth hearing our admonitions, 
he giveth himself to reveling, and to debauchery and ban- 
queting. The people of the city shall stone him and he 
shall die.' '"'^ Again, in Exodus, we read: "He that 
striketh his father or mother shall be put to death,"'*' 
and "He that curseth his father or mother shall die the 
death.""' Yet Ederscheim thinks the fact that there are 



137 Lit. Remains of Em. Deutsch. N. Y., 1874, p. 23. 

138 (For Mosaic Times) cf. Gen. XXII; Judges XII, 34 ff. 
i39Deut. XXI, 18-21. 

140 Ex. XXI, 15. 

141 Ex. XXI, 17; Cf. Lev. XX, 9. 



58 SOME MOTIVES IN PAGAN EDUCATION 

no fewer than nine different words in the Old Testament 
each designating a different stage of life of the child is 
an evidence of the loving anxiety with which its growth 
was marked and of the tender bond which knit together 
the Jewish parents and their children, and points to the 
pride and fond hopes of the parent in the child."" It is 
hard to believe, however, that tenderness and marked 
severity wonld be fonnd normally in the same home. 

The principal content of Hebrew education before the 
Babylonian Captivity was a knowledge of the Law;"^ 
after the Captivity and the organization of schools, the 
primary emphasis was always on the Law. To this effect 
is the testimony of Josephus Flavins, who says: **And, 
indeed, the greatest part of mankind are so far from liv- 
ing according to their own laws, that they hardly know 
them ; but when they have sinned they learn from others 
that they have trespassed the law. . . . But for our peo- 
ple, if anybody do but ask any one of them about the laws, 
he will more readily tell them all than he will tell his own 
name, and this in consequence of our having learned them 
immediately, as soon as ever we became sensible of any- 
thing, and of our having them, as it were, engraven on our 
souls.""* 

The direct injunction to study and obey the command- 
ments of God is repeated over and over in the Old Testa- 
ment with the declaration of a blessing accompanying 
obedience, and a curse following disobedience. Knowl- 
edge would have to precede practice, hence the further 
command : ' ' Lay up these words in your hearts and minds, 
and hang them for a sign on your hands, and place them 
between your eyes. Teach your children that they medi- 
tate on them, when thou sittest in thy house, and when 
thou walkest on the way, and when thou liest down and 



142 Sketches of Jew. Soc. Life. Lond. (No date), p. 103. 

143 Cf. Deut, XVII, 18; Jos., I, 8; Exod., XXIV, 12; Deut., I, 5; PMlo, 
Legat ad Caium, 16. 

144 Contra Ap., II, 19. 



COMPARED WITH THE CHRISTIAN IDEAL 59 

risetli up. Thou slialt write them upon the posts and 
doors of thy house. "^^^ Again, "Forget not the words 
that thy eyes have seen and let them not go out of thy 
heart all the days of thy life. Thou shalt teach them to 
thy sons and to thy grandsons.""*' The command is re- 
iterated in a succeeding chapter, "And these words which 
I command thee this day, shall be in thy heart ; and thou 
shalt teach them to thy children . . . and thou shalt 
write them in the entry and on the doors of thy house. ""^ 
The priests and the Levites, as we know, were for a 
long time the only instructors outside the home."* From 
the time of Roboam until about the fourth century B. C. 
Prophets were raised up to instruct the people. In Deut- 
eronomy we read that "Moses wrote the Law and deliv- 
ered it to the priests and sons of Levi, who carried the ark 
of the covenant of the Lord, and to all the ancients of 
Israel. ' '"^ But the time will come when ' ' they shall teach 
no more everyone his neighbor, and everyone his brother, 
saying: 'Know the Lord; for all shall know Me from the 
least of them even to the greatest' saith the Lord.'"^" 
This was a prophetic vision of the time when the Law 
would be perfected by the fulfilment of the Promise. But 
meanwhile, during the period of waiting, "it was in- 
variably the custom, as it was desirable on other days 
also, but especially on the seventh day ... to discuss 
matters of philosophy, the rulers of the people beginning 
the explanation, and teaching the multitude what they 
ought to do and to say, and the populace listening so as to 
improve in virtue, and being much better in their moral 
character and in their conduct through life; in accord- 
ance to which custom, even to this day the Jews hold their 
philosophical discussions on the seventh day. . . .^^^ In 



i« Deut., XI, 18-20. 
146 Deut., IV, 9. 
1*7 Deut, VI, 6-9. 

148 Cf. below. 

149 Deut., XXXI, 9; Cf. Jer., II, 8; Mai., II, 7; Par., XVII, 7. 

150 Jer., XXXI, 34. 

151 Philo, De vita Moysis, III, 27. 



60 SOME MOTIVES IN PAGAX EDUCATION 

this way the Jewish parents received their instruction in 
the Law and its accepted interpretation and they in their 
turn taught their children. 

We cannot help but notice that throughout the Old 
Testament, whenever there is a direct command to obey 
the Law, there is appended normally a precept to teach 
also the substance of the command to the children. The 
parent was, then, the divinely appointed teacher of the 
child. Repeatedly in Deuteronomy, Leviticus, Ecclesias- 
ticus, Ecclesiastes, Proverbs and Wisdom, comes the in- 
junction, "Keep my commandments," and "teach them 
to thy children.^^" 

To the faithful one there is insured abundance of grain 
^nd wine, peace in his family and victory over enemies; 
to the one who shall despise and condemn the Laws, pov- 
erty, sickness, dearth of fecundity in his fields, and sub- 
jection to his political enemies. 

These two injunctions, keep my commandments and 
teach them to your children, were then the directives in 
early Hebrew education. The content of education besides 
the Law was perhaps only writing and a little arithmetic. 
Hyvernat is of the opinion that education "in the pre- 
exilic times was mostly oral, either by parents or some 
near relatives, in some cases by special and regular 
tutors. ' '^^^ The teacher-parent had the right and the duty 
of chastisement. Justification for corporal punishment 
from the Old Testament is, indeed, not hard to find: "He 
that spareth the rod hateth his son, but he that loveth him 
correcteth him betimes. "^^* "Withhold not correction 
from a child; for if thou strike him with a rod, he shall 
not die. Thou shalt beat him with a rod and deliver his 
soul from hell. ' '^^^ ' ' The rod and reproof bring wisdom ; 



152 Cf. Lev., XXVI; Deut, VI, 7-11; VIII, 1-2; XI, 27; XII, 28-32; 
Eccli., XXXII, 28; Eccle., XII, 13. 

153 Oriental Schools. Wash., 1901, p. 287. 

154 Prov., XIII, 24. 

155 Prov., XXIII, 13-14. 



COMPARED WITH THE CHRISTIAN IDEAL 61 

but the child that is left to his own will bringeth his 
mother to shame. '"^"^ '*He that loveth his son frequently 
chastiseth him. . . .'"" 

Yet it would seem that there was no severity for se- 
verity's sake but for correction's sake and that the cor- 
rection was not so severe as to harden or to brutalize. In 
this respect the Jewish system differed essentially from 
the Spartan, which aimed primarily at teaching endur- 
ance. The whole life of the Jewish father and the Jewish 
mother, dominated as it was meant to be by spiritual 
ideals, and responsive, let us hope, in the main, to their 
knowledge of divine accountability for all their actions, 
would not be likely to stray far from the norm. 

Besides, the declaration of future rewards in store for 
the observers of the Law, the numerous injunctions to 
honor and obey parents, to love wisdom, furnished mo- 
tives for intelligent labor wholly wanting to the Greek or 
the Roman. Then, the fact that the earliest sensations 
were of phylactery, family prayers, various domestic 
rites, festivals with their splendid object lessons, — all 
helped to clear the way so as to lessen the difficulty of 
learning the Law through feelings of reverence and de- 
sirable curiosity previously aroused. ^^^ 

The honor, respect and obedience due to parents must 
have furnished both a motive and an end. "Honor thy 
father and thy mother, that thou mayst be long-lived upon 
the land which the Lord thy God will give thee,"^^^ con- 
tains both an injunction and a declaration of benefits at- 
tached to the observance of the injunction. "Honor thy 
father and thy mother as the Lord, thy God hath com- 
manded thee. That thou mayst live a long time, and it 
may be well with thee in the land, which the Lord thy God 



i5cprov., XIX, 15. 

i57Eccli., XXX, 1; Cf. Prov., XXII, 15. 

lo^Cf. Edersheim, The Life and Times of Jesus, Vol. I, N. Y., 1904, 
p. 229. 

159 Exod., XX, 12. 



62 SOME MOTIVES IN PAGAN EDUCATION 

will give tliee."^*'" Again, a reiteration of the command 
with the promise of not only longevity, but prosperity 
attached to it. The promise attached to the observance 
of this command must have been a powerful incentive 
to the child to obedience. The parental and the teaching 
authority were, as we noted above, vested in one and the 
same person, which fact tended to intensify the effect. 

But aside from these incentives was the love of wisdom 
for its own sake, so highly esteemed in Jewish writings 
and Jewish traditions. These traditions, operative it 
would seem, during the whole range of Jewish educa- 
tion, will be discussed in connection with the second 
period. 

THE PERIOD FOLLOWING THE BABYLONIAN CAPTIVITY 

The strain of the Captivity, the necessity it put the 
Jews under of worshipping God without the splendors of 
the temple of Jerusalem, etc., had begotten a racial sub- 
jectivism which manifested itself in almost fanatic zeal 
for the Law to the extreme point of liteiial interpretation 
or beyond. The Jews, henceforth, considered themselves 
to be the only people of the One True God and discrim- 
inated carefully against all others. From this time be- 
gins the period of extreme exclusiveness.'^'^ The return 
from the Captivity marks, then, a period of religious en- 
thusiasm evidenced by the rebuilding of the temple, added 
zeal for the teaching of the Law, and the rise of a special 
teaching class outside the priestly class, namely, the 
Soferim or Scribe. These scribes "enumerated" not 
merely the precepts, but the words, letters, the signs 
of the scripture, thereby guarding it from all future inter- 
polations and corruptions. . . . They had to instruct the 
people, to preach in the synagogues, to teach in the 



160 Deut., VI, 16. 

162 Cf. Miiman, Hist, of the Jews. N. Y., 1893, Vol. I, p. 468. 



COMPARED WITH THE CHRISTIAX IDEAL 63 

schools/**^ Hyvernat, commenting upon the generally ac- 
cepted fact that schools for children were a post-exilic 
institution, thinks they may have been borrowed from the 
Chaldeans/*'* But the first mention of a school proper is 
made by Simon ben Shetach, president -of the Sanhedrin. 
He decreed that all children should receive instruction 
in Holy Scripture and tradition and for this purpose 
public schools should be established everywhere/''^ This 
was only in the first century before Christ. 

The disciplinary means in these schools and in their 
later development would seem to have been, first, national 
and religious zeal, which were always linked, if not one, 
in the Jewish mind; secondly, idealization of the trans- 
cendent value of wisdom. No doubt the rod was never 
entirely relegated. 

During the period under discussion, there arose, side 
by side with the scribe, a "guild," as it has been called, 
of Wise Men who taught but who were in no way asso- 
ciated with the Scribe school.^*"' 

The pedagogic wisdom included in the Sacred Books, 
Proverbs and Ecclesiasticus, inculcates, in great measure, 
a love of wisdom for the practical advantages in store for 
the wise man. In the Book of Proverbs, we read: "He 
that understandeth shall possess governments."^*'^ "But 
he that shall hear Me shall rest without terror, and shall 
enjoy abundance, without fear of evils. "^"^ Besides the 
numerous other exhortations to hear instruction and get 
wisdom and prudence for their practical advantages, 
wisdom is to be acquired also by the time-honored rod 
for "The rod and reproof bring wisdom, but the child 
that is left to his own will bringeth his mother to 



163 Deutsch, Lit. Rem. N. Y., 1874, p. 20. 

164 Cf. Oriental Scliools, Wash., 1901, p. 287. 

165 Jer. Kethuboth, VIII, 32c. 

166 Cf. Prov. XXII, 17; XIII, 14; Eccle., XII, llff. 
i67Prov., I, 5; Cf. I, 24-30. 

168 Prov., I, 33. 



64 SOME MOTIVES IN PAGAN EDUCATION 

sliame.'"-'' But tlie rod was not to be employed without 
discriminatiou and caution for "a reproof availetli more 
with a wise man than a hundred stripes with a fool." 
(Auth. version) or *^A rebuke given by a wise man avail- 
eth more than a hundred stripes of a fool.'"^*' (from the 
Hebrew.) 

Though worldly gain is put forward as an incentive 
for those who seek wisdom unwillingly and for the idle 
and the scorner of wisdom; such, the hope of worldly 
gain should constrain to pursue her; yet, the inspired 
writer meant to make wisdom so attractive that it would 
be pursued ordinarily for its own sake. Pursue wisdom 
*'That grace may be added to thy head and a chain of 
gold to thy neck.'"^^ *'Her ways are beautiful ways and 
her paths are peaceable.'"''^ For wisdom is better than 
all most precious things ; and whatsoever may be desired 
cannot be compared to it."^" Indeed, the praise of 
wisdom is repeated in almost every chapter of Proverbs 
and the hearing and later reading of these sapiential say- 
ings must have been a fruitful source of inspiration for 
the Hebrew child's endeavor. 

In Ecclesiastes, we find a less glorious halo on the head 
of wisdom. While it is above and beyond all other good 
in value, yet all things are but vanity. ^'And I proposed 
to myself to seek and search out wisely concerning all 
things that are done under the sun. This painful occupa- 
tion hath God given to the children of men to be exercised 
therein. ... I have spoken in my heart, saying: *' Behold, 
I am become great, and have gone beyond all in wisdom ; 
and my mind hath contemplated many things wisely," 
but, he adds, ''in much wisdom there is much indigna- 

169 Prov., XXIX, 15; Cf. XIII, 24; XII, 1; XXIII, 13. 
iToProv., XVII, 10. 

171 Prov., I, 9. 
inaProv., Ill, 17. 

172 Prov., VIII, 11; Cf. VIII, 19; XVI, 16. 



COMPARED WITH THE CHRISTIAN IDEAL 65 

tion: and he that addeth knowledge, addeth also 
labor.'"" In the following chapter, wisdom is extolled 
in comparison with folly. *'And I saw that wisdom ex- 
celled folly, as much as light differeth from darkness. 
The eyes of the wise man are in his head ; the fool walketh 
in darkness.'"'* Yet he is depressed by the thought that 
both alike must die. In the second half of the Book, wis- 
dom gains more praise. ' ' For as wisdom is a defense, so 
money is a defense, but learning and wisdom excel in this 
that they give life to him that possesseth them. ' '^^^ 

Again, in the Book of Wisdom, the inspired writer can 
scarcely extol her enough. His words roll on in fertile 
profusion and each verse, though seemingly reaching the 
summit of praise, is eclipsed by another more all-embrac- 
ing. She is personified as possessing all the qualities 
we deem most honorable and most exalted.^^" "For Grod 
loveth none but him that dwelleth with wisdom. For she 
is more beautiful than the sun, and above all the orders 
of the stars ; being compared with light she is found be- 
fore it. For after this cometh night but no evil can over- 
come wisdom."^" 

In speaking of the education of the Spartan as laid 
down by Lycurgus, Laurie notes as one of its evident 
short-comings that it was a moulding from without.^^® 
With the Hebrew child, having before his mind this justly 
high estimate of the value of wisdom, the entire resources 
of his intellectual and moral nature could not but be 
stirred to responsive action. It was thus pre-eminently 
a moulding form within. 

The writer of Ecclesiasticus lays down as his express 
purpose to write in the Book the doctrine of wisdom and 



173 Eccle., I, 13-18. 
i74Eccle., II, 13-14. 

175 Eccle., VII, 13; Cf. VII, 20; IX, 17; X, 1-2. 

176 Cf. Wisd., VII, 22-24. 

177 Wisd., VII, 29-30. 

178 Cf. Prechrist. Ed. Lond., 1904, p. 219. 



OG SOME MOTIVES IN PAGAN EDUCATION 

instruction.'''' The Book, then, as we would expect, is a 
storehouse of pedagogical precepts. In the first chapter, 
the fear of God is called the "beginning of wisdom," 
"the religiousness of knowledge," "the fullness of wis- 
dom," "the crown of wisdom." Chapter six gives the 
exhortation: "My son, from thy youth up receive in- 
struction and even to thy grey hairs thou shalt find 
wisdom."'^" He councils, "Put thy feet into her fetters 
and thy neck into her chains. Come to her with all thy 
mind. ... If thou wilt incline thy ear thou shalt receive 
instruction; and if thou wilt love to hear thou shalt be 
wise. Stand in the multitude of ancients that are wise, 
and join thyself from thy heart to their wisdom that thou 
mayst hear every discourse of God, and the sayings of 
praise may not escape thee. And if thou see a man of 
understanding, go to him early in the morning, and let 
thy feet wear the steps of his door. ' "^' Again, ' * A man 
of sense will praise every wise word that he hears and 
will apply it to himself. ' "^■ 

The task of chastisement is set forth in this book side 
by side with the duty of parental instruction and the 
danger of neglecting this duty. But most of the Book is 
taken up with the praise of wisdom and exhortations to 
seek her above all other treasures. 

All through the Sapiential Books, the study of which 
formed a fair portion of available literature, the injunc- 
tion to be wise, not "first and above all others distin- 
guished," was the ideal. The prophets, the Wise Men, 
the Scribes, the parents, — all who had to do directly or 
indirectly with the education of the child, had in mind, or 
purposed to have, the desire to instill into him a deep re- 
ligious consciousness, a sense of moral worth and dignity, 
an appreciation of the glorious mission of the race, which 



179 Cf. Eccli., L, 29. 

180 Eccli., VI, 18. 

181 Eccli., VI, 25-37. 

182 Eccli., XXI, 18. 



COMPARED ^YITH THE CHRISTIAN IDEAL 67 

mission was to perpetuate the knowledge of the One God 
with the history of His selective dispensations toward 
them. 

We are then led to think that the sense of spiritual 
responsibility, the appreciation of the exalted mission of 
the race, the glorification of wisdom by her sages, the 
injunction to love and respect parents with its accom- 
panying declaration, the heavenly reward in store for the 
observers of the law, were on the whole the only incen- 
tives to study and that the rod was perhaps not as fre- 
quently used as might be expected from its somewhat 
frequent mention. 

How far Greek influence was felt in the school after the 
conquest of Alexander, it is not easy to determine. Two 
passages in Holy Writ indicate that there were at least 
some gymnasia ephebeum established shortly before the 
Machabean Revolt. These references with all they call 
up of contests, rewards, etc., characteristic of the Greek 
gjinnasium, furnish the only suggestion of emulation in 
the whole range of Hebrew education before Talmudic 
times. 

In the First Book of the Machabees we read that some 
Jews persuaded others to go and make a covenant with 
the heathens. "And some of the people determined to 
do this, and went to the king; and he gave them license 
to do after the ordinance of the heathen. And they built 
a place of exercise in Jerusalem according to the laws of 
the nation."^-" Later on to the same effect, we are told 
that Jason "went to the king promising him three hun- 
dred and sixty talents of silver, and out of other re- 
sources fourscore talents. Besides this, he promised 
also a hundred and fifty talents more, if he might have 
license to set up a place of exercise, and a place for 
youth. . . . Wliich when the king had granted and he had 
gotten the rule into his own hands, forthwith he began 



183 I Mac, I, 14fE. 



68 SOME MOTIVES IN PAGAN EDUCATION 

to bring over his countrymen to the fashion of the 
heathen . . . for he had the boldness to set up under the 
castle a place of exercise. ' '^^* 

The deplorable effect of these gymnasia was soon felt, 
'*In so much that the priests were not now occupied about 
offices of the altar, but despising the temple and neglect- 
ing the sacrifice, hastened to be partakers of the games, 
and of the unlawful allowances thereof, and of the exer- 
cise of the discus. '"^^ 

However, it is certain that Greek influence was never 
universal. The fact that the Jews always bore the Greek 
yoke grudgingly would argue against any very general 
adoption of Greek methods. Mathathias when dying en- 
joined upon his sons : ''Now, therefore, Oh my sons, be ye 
zealous for the Law and give your lives for the covenant 
of your fathers. ' "^'' When the temple had been defiled'" 
and the synagogues throughout the land destroyed, a re- 
volt lead by the sons of Mathathias, resulted, as we know, 
in the casting off of the Greek yoke. If the Jew was to 
maintain his spiritual inheritance, it was impossible for 
him to amalgamate with the Hellene, especially of this 
period when most of the old virility had died out. It was 
a clash between two diametrically opposed theories, one 
aiming at Pagan aestheticism simply; the other, trans- 
cendently ethical : between Jehovah on one side and Zeus 
on the other. The contrast between Greek and Jewish 
ideals is dwelt upon by Josephus. One, as he well says, 
makes religion only a part of virtue, but Moses makes all 
virtues a part of religion. "The reason why the consti- 
tution of this legislation was ever better directed to the 
utility of all than any other legislations were, is this, that 
Moses did not make religion a part of virtue, but he saw 
and he ordained other virtues to be parts of religion; I 



184 II Mac, IV, 8ff. 

185 II Mac, IV, 14. 

186 I Mac, II, 50. 

187 1 Mac, I, 49-62; Jos. Ant, XII, 5, 4. 



COMPARED WITH THE CHRISTIAN IDEAL 69 

mean justice, fortitude, and temperance, and a universal 
agreement of the members of the community with one an- 
other; for all our actions and studies and all our words 
(in Moses's settlement) have a reference to piety towards 
God."^«« 

Here we have expressed the fundamental difference be- 
tween Greek ' ' becomingness ' ' and Hebrew ' ' piety. ' ' While 
for some time, it seems, many of the Jews were blinded 
by the shimmer of Greek culture, outraged national and 
religious feeling soon asserted itself and the pendulum 
of Hellenism traced a recessive arc. Moreover, during 
the century and a quarter of Greek supremacy the lamp 
of instruction was kept alive in the vast majority of He- 
brew homes, as Deutsch says, and we must think, too, 
that the discipline of the home was maintained in full 
vigor by such splendid types of Jewish women as the 
mother of the seven sons spoken of in the Second Book 
of the Machabees and myriads of others, who, if less re- 
nowned, were none the less Jewish mothers, and therefore 
zealous for the Law. 

AFTER THE FALL OF JERUSALEM 

After the fall of Jerusalem and the destruction of the 
temple (70 A. D.), a period of feverish educational 
activity ensued. Wherever the Jew was up to this time, 
except during the short period of the Babylonian Cap- 
tivity and, then, there was no parallel since at that time 
he had the Prophets with him to instruct and console him, 
his mind could ever turn to the "Holy city with its Tem- 
ple dedicated to the Most High God. ' '"^ But with the fall 
of the city and the destruction of the temple, the Jews 
realized that they had now only one hope of preserving 
their nationality and their religion. This was by per- 
petuating the mandates of Jehovah, together with the 



is^ Contra Ap. Transl. W^histon, Bk. II, p. 815. 
1S9 Philo, In Flaccum (Ed. Francf.), p. 971. 



70 SOME MOTIVES IX i>a<;an kducation 

splendid narrative of His selective dispensation for them, 
from generation to generation of their children. Their 
nationality and their religion were one, as we know, just 
as were education and religions instruction almost 
synonymous. 

Despite the decree of Simon ben Shetach mentioned 
above"" and the opinion of Deutsch^''^ to the contrary, we 
can find no evidence that schools were numerous in Judaea 
up to about this time. But Josua ben Gamla, foreseeing, 
no doubt, the danger threatening the nation (64 A. D.), 
decreed that schools be provided in every town for chil- 
dren over five years old."- About this time, also, that vast 
body of what we might term tradition which had grown 
up gradually and which embodied the earliest recollec- 
tions of this people, together with the interpretation of 
the Law in general and in special cases, came to be col- 
lected and embodied in the Talmud. 

According to the Talmud, these schools, provided for 
by Josua ben Gamla, spread with almost incredible rapid- 
ity, so much so that though we find in the Talmud that 
^* Jerusalem was destroyed because schools and school 
children ceased to be there, "^"'' later ^'They searched 
from Dan to Beersheba, and found not an illiterate per- 
son; from Gaboth unto Antiphorus and could discover 
neither male nor female who was not acquainted with the 
laws of the ritual and ceremonial observances.""* The 
number of children in attendance at a single school is 
astonishing. Gamaliel said: '*A thousand school chil- 
dren were in my father's house, and all were instructed 
in the law and the Greek language.'""^ 

The content of Hebrew education of the Talmudic 
period was a study of the Bible from the time the child 



i'-io Cf. p. 63. 
i»i Cf. p. 57. 
192 B. B., 21a. 
J93Shab., 119b. 

194 Sanh., 94b. 

195 Baba Kama, 83a. 



COMPAUED WITH THE CHRISTIAN IDEAL 71 

started to school nntil he was about ten years old. From 
this time five years more were devoted to the study of 
the Mishna and the remainder of his school life was given 
over to the study of the Gemarah.'"'' The ordinary school 
age would seem to have been about six.^**' 

An injunction from the Talmud reveals educational 
values as appraised by the Jewish mind. ' ' As soon as the 
child begins to speak, the father should teach him to say 
in Hebrew, "The Law which Moses commanded us is 
the heritage of the congregation of Jacob," meaning, it 
would seem, to emphasize the fact that it was to the Jew- 
ish people and to them in contradistinction to all others 
that God gave the Law. Thus the first thing taught con- 
sciously was an appreciation of national preference and 
distinction. At the same time he was to be taught, 
"Hear, Israel, the Eternal Our God is One God,""« the 
introduction to the Decalogue. The second point of em- 
phasis was upon reverence towards the God Wlio had 
chosen this people. 

The duty of the fatlier to have his son instructed is 
stated as forcibly as in Deuteronomy and the Sapiential 
Books. "It is incumbent on the father to instruct his 
son,'"'"' and "it is not permitted to live in a place where 
there is neither school nor schoolmaster."^*"' The 
mother's duty in this regard is especially noted. The 
Talmud says, in substance, that knowledge of the Law 
can be looked for only in those that have sucked it in at 
their mother's breast."*'^ 

The means of maintaining attention in the schools, as 
prescribed in the Talmud, would seem to have been ap- 
peal to the intelligence of the pupil for establishing the 
reasonableness of application to study. "Be assiduous 

isfiCf. Aboth, V, 21; Keluboth, 50a. 

197 Ibid. 

198 Succah, 42a. 
i99Kidd, 29a. 
200 Sanh., 17b. 
■-'"1 Ber., 63b. 



72 SOME MOTIVES IN PAGAN EDUCATION 

in study for knowledge cannot be acquired through in- 
heritance."^"^ Then, the Jew made a careful analysis of 
the individual capacity of the child and did not attempt nor- 
mally to extort the same amount of work from pupils differ- 
ing widely in mentality. There are four categories of 
pupils mentioned in the Mishna. "Four characters are 
found among those who sit for instruction before the wise ; 
they correspond to a sponge, a funnel, a strainer, and a 
sieve. The sponge imbibes all the funnel receives at one 
end and discharges at the other, the strainer suffers the 
wine to pass through but retains the dregs, and the sieve 
removes the bran but retains the fine flour. "^**^ The dif- 
ferent classes of ijupils were to get each a different meas- 
ure of instruction. Then the lessons were never to be 
unduly long. ' ' If you attempt to grasp too much at once, 
you grasp nothing at all."^''* Various devices were em- 
ployed to aid the memory. These were all the more im- 
portant since memorizing the Law, etc., formed a large 
part of the school work. We find such psychological 
wisdom as "Speaking aloud the sentence which is being 
learned fixes it in the memory. ' '-"^ As a warning against 
silent study, we are told that Rabbi Elezer had a pupil 
who studied without articulating the words of his lessons 
and in consequence forgot everything in three years. "^"" 
Then, mnemonics, such as associating a place with a num- 
ber, was employed. We also find catch-words, similarly 
sounded words, proverbs of Scripture or of the Mishna, — 
all made use of as an aid to the memory through asso- 
ciation of sounds, ideas, etc.-'^^ "No man," said Rabbi 
Chisda, "can acquire a knowledge of the Law unless he 
endeavors to fix the same in his memory by certain marks 
and signs. "^''® 



202 Aboth, 2, XII. 

203 Aboth, V, 18. 
204Kidd, 17a. 

205 Erubin, 54a. 

206 Ibid. 

207Taanith, 14a; Joma, 21b; Mishna Shekalim, V. 
208 Erubin, 54b. 



COMPARED WITH THE CHRISTIAN IDEAL 73 

The Talmud has much to say about the selection of a 
teacher and his qualifications. In the first place, young 
teachers are not to be employed, for, ''Instruction by 
young teachers is like sour grapes and new wine ; instruc- 
tion by older teachers, however, is like ripe grapes and 
old wine."-'''* Then "The passionate or hasty man can- 
not be a teacher. "-^° Patience would seem to have been 
a very much needed qualification since the work could 
not help being monotonous through the frequent repeti- 
tion of the same content. Repetition to the number of 
four hundred times is mentioned-^^ and reviewing one 
hundred and one times was considered to be better than 
one hundred times. "^^ 

But if the teacher was to be carefully chosen and to be 
assiduous in the performance of his duties, the pupil had 
enjoined upon him the duty of respect for his teacher. 
"The fear of the instructor should be as the fear of 
heaven. "^^^ "He who learneth of an associate one chap- 
ter, sentence, verse or word, should behave towards him 
with the greatest respect."-'* External signs of respect 
such as walking either behind the teacher or at his left 
side are enjoined.-^-^ The teacher must never be called by 
name.-'" His seat should never be occupied by the pupil 
and his words should never be refuted, at least in his 
presence.-" Moreover, if both parent and teacher were in 
need, the pupil should aid the teacher first, then the 
parent.-'^ 

Motives for study as inculcated in the Talmud were, 
then, as in pre-Talmuclic times, zeal for their religion and 

209 Aboth, IV, 20. 

210 Aboth. II, 57. 

211 Erubin, 54b. 

212 Hag., IX, 6. 

213 Aboth, IV, 12. 

214 Perek R. Meir. VI, 3. 

215 Joma, 37a. 

216 Sanh., 100a. 

217 Berachoth, 27a. 

2i8Baba Metsia, 33a; Harajoth, 13a. 



74 SOME MOTIVES IN PAGAN EDUCATIOX 

their Law. Then, as an immediate aid in maintaining or 
securing attention, appeal is rather made to the intellect. 
Corporal punishment is rarely referred to. The Talmud 
forbids striking a grown-up son, permits corporal pun- 
ishment only when other means fail, and then only mini- 
mum punishment. The respect and reverence for the 
teacher, so frequently enjoined, was, we think, a splendid 
incentive to persevering effort on the part of the pupil. 
The careful appraising of the natural gifts and the natu- 
ral short-comings of the child would make for harmonious 
work. 

There can be no doubt, however, that the Talmudic pre- 
cepts as written down during the early centuries of the 
Christian Era, were milder and sweeter than these same 
precepts as operative during the preceding centuries. 
The modifying influences were due not to any change in 
the character of the people but to the teachings of Chris- 
tianity. This, the Christian ideal in its training, will be 
treated in the following chapter. 



CHAPTER VIII 

THE CHRISTIAN IDEAL 

The Hebrew People during the centuries preceding the 
Birth of Christ had centered their educational endeavor 
primarily, as we saw above,'^" on the "Law" as a unify- 
ing principle ; the pagan countries which we studied aimed 
at State-utilitarianism, in Sparta ; physical and mental ex- 
cellence of the individual, in Athens ; practical prudence 
or * ' business excellence, ' ' in Rome. The motives employed 
paralleled in moral worth the ideal in each case, as we 
saw. Christ came and set up a definite ideal differing 
essentially from the Pagan, and also differing markedly, 
though not essentially, from that obedience to the "Law" 
as interpreted by tlie Jewish Scribe. The new standard 
of value was, and for practical Christians continues to 
be, the spiritual or ethical. 

The time foretold for the coming of the Redeemer 
came ; all the prophesies relative to the exact time of His 
Birth had been fulfilled. ' ' The sceptre shall not be taken 
away from Juda, nor a ruler from his thigh, till He 
come that is to be sent, and He shall be the expectation of 
nations. ' '"-° The ' ' seventy weeks ' ' from the second build- 
ing up of the temple had passed"'^ and with the fulfillment 
of the time Christ was born. 

The Birth of the Redeemer is the focus towards which 
all previous historj^ converges and from which all subse- 
quent history, whether social, political, or educational, 
diverges. The Christian ideal was not destructive of 
what was positive or truthful, whether found in Greek 
philosophical thought, Roman jurisprudence, or in Rab- 
binical teaching, Everytliing in i^hilosopliy, or in educa- 
tional theory or practice worthy of permanence, was re- 



219 Cf. p. 56ff. 

220 Gen. XLIX, 10. 

211 Dan., IX, 24ff; Cf. Ag., II, 1-12; H al. 



75 



76 SOME MOTIVES IN PAGAN EDUCATION 

tained but first purified and sanctified and transformed 
by the vivifying power of the Word of God. Christianity 
appraised everything by a new standard of value, the 
spiritual as against the Pagan; and the turning of the 
heart towards God, worshipping Him in "spirit and in 
truth," as against the innumerable observances, wearing 
of phylacteries, making long public prayers, countless 
washings, etc., of the Jews. 

The ideal man to the Christian is not Achilles, the 
brave ; nor Odysseus, the wise or the crafty ; nor the man 
who merely observes the ^ ' Law ' ' in all its minutiae. The 
Christian ideal is not less high than the infinite perfec- 
tion of God. "Be ye perfect as also your heavenly 
father is."^^- To the young man who had kept all the 
commandments from his youth and had, therefore, ar- 
rived at that perfection required by the Law, a still higher 
step was counseled: "Yet one thing is wanting to thee, 
sell all whatever thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou 
shalt have treasures in heaven : and come, follow Me. ' '"^ 
Thus the Christian's way leads always from one height 
to another until, let us hope, his upward striving is finally 
rewarded by the possession of God. 

Many events, ordained, no doubt, by the Providence of 
God, prepared the way for the spread of Christianity. 
Many others would seem to point to the inopportuneness, 
if we dare use the word here, of the appearance of a Mes- 
siah teaching a religion so transcendently spiritual. 
Among the latter, was the gross sensuality or, we might 
say, animality to which the large part of mankind had 
sunk. "Eat, drink, enjoy yourself; the rest is nothing."^'* 
Moreover it was a world of contention and strife and 
jealousy. Yet in this self-same world, during the life- 
time of the Apostles, the Gospel of universal brotherhood 
and love * ' For all the law is fulfilled in one word : Thou 



222 Matt. V, 48. 

223 Luke, XVIII, 22. 

224Strabo, XIV, 4; Cf. Rom., I, 24ff; I Cor.. V, 1; et al. 



COMPARED WITH THE CHRISTIAN IDEAL 77 

slialt love thy neighbor as thyself,""^ was spread far and 
wide. 

Paradoxical as it may seem, the low moral level of the 
majority of men at the time, while, of course, not an ex- 
pression of the Providence of God but of the perverted 
will of man, yet aided by the very revoltingness of its 
degradation, to bring about a reaction, at least in the bet- 
ter disposed. The natural law,"" we know, spoke to the 
hearts of the many making it but a step from disgust for 
the sensuality of the times to the willingness to accept 
the doctrines of Christianity with all its infinitely high 
ideals. Wlien the pendulum swings far in one direction, 
we may be sure it will retrace its own arc quite as far in 
the opposite direction. Some one has said that things 
had come to such a pass in the years preceding the Com- 
ing of the Redeemer that one of two ends alone seemed 
possible, either the regeneration or the extinction of man- 
kind. ' ' On this sated and weary world the preaching of the 
Apostles and their successors made a vivid impression, 
with its assertion of a new kingdom and a new ruler in 
the yet unconquered province of the human heart. "^"^ 

A further circumstance tending to hasten the accept- 
ance of the truths of Christianity was the fact that be- 
lief in the gods had long since almost entirely died out. 
This was more especially true in intellectual and philo- 
sophical circles."^ The only semblance of religion re- 
maining, outside of the vaguely defined God, identified 
with nature, of the Stoic, was the worship, in name at 
least, of the imperial ruler and belief in various super- 
stitions imported into the Empire.^^" 

Then, the Greek language had been made, through the 
conquests of Alexander, the '* learned" language of the 

225 Gal., V, 14. 

226 cf. Cic. De Leg., I, 33. 

227 Shahan, Begin. Christ. N. Y., 1903, p. 29. 

228 Cf. Juv., II, 49; Tac. Ann., IV, 16. 

229 Cf. Tac. Ann., XVI, 6; Juv., VI, 489. 



(9 SOME MOTIVES IN PAGAN EDUCATION 

civilized world. To this advautage of unity of language 
was added the asset, through the marvelous growth of 
the Roman Empire, of political unity. Add to these, the 
network of good roads built by the Romans for the 
speedy transfer of their legions, making travel more ex- 
peditious than it was for us perhaps down to the nine- 
teenth century, the era of railroad building. Shahan, 
commenting upon the status of the world at the time of 
Christ, says : * ^ The last act in the preparation of that 
political unity which facilitated the success of the Gospel 
was the one that placed all earthly power in the hands of 
Rome. It was the end and acme of state-building in an- 
tiquity, and furnished the needed basis for the sublime 
social and religious revolution then at hand."-°° Unity 
of language among civilized peoples and unity of govern- 
ment were providential agents aiding the Apostles in the 
spread of the Gospel, but they were at best, of course, only 
extrinsic agents. The intrinsic causes of the rapid spread 
of the Gospel were the infinite sublimity of the doctrines, 
the natural tendenc}^ of the intellect towards truth, the 
burning zeal of the Apostles aroused by personal inter- 
course with the Master, and the Wisdom of the Holy 
Ghost, so abundantly bestowed upon them on the first 
Christian Pentecost, speaking through them. ' ' The work 
is not of persuasiveness, but Christianity is a thing of 
might, wheresoever it is hated by the world. "-"^ So rapid 
was the spread of this '^ thing of might," Christianity, 
that Tertullian could write when the Church was barely 
two centuries old, "We are but of yesterday, and yet we 
fill every place — your cities, your islands, your fortresses, 
your camps, your colonies, your tribes, your decuries, 
your councils, the palace, the senate, the forum, we leave 
you nothing but your temple. ^^^ 



230 Shahan, Begin. Christ. N. Y., 1903, p. 19; Cf. Orig. Contra Cel., 
II, 30. 

231 St. Ignat. Epist. Rom., 3. 

232 Tertul. Apologet., XXXVII. 



COMPARED WITH THE CHRISTIAN IDEAL 71) 

The first specific fact relative to Christian education 
which we make note of in the works of the early Fathers 
is the dignified position assigned to woman. She is given 
for the first time, we find, with modifications noted be- 
low,-^^ the same educational privileges as man. Clement 
of Alexandria is the earliest Christian writer we could 
find who gives formal expression to this, but the dignity 
of woman is mirrored repeatedly in both the Old and the 
New Testament. "Let us, then," says Clement of Alex- 
andria, "embracing more and more the good obedience, 
give ourselves to the Lord, clinging to what is surest, the 
cable of faith in Him, and understanding that the virtue 
of man and woman is the same. If the God of both is one, 
the Master of both is one ; one church, one temperance, 
one modesty; their food is common, marriage an equal 
yoke ; respiration, sight, hearing, knowledge, hope, obedi- 
ence, love, all alike. And those whose life is common have 
common grace and a common salvation ; common to them 
are love and training."-^* St. Jerome makes a staunch 
protest against some zealots of his time who took excep- 
tion to his dedicating some of his important works to the 
two illustrious women, Paula and Eustochium, who had 
aided him in the preparation of the Vulgate and whose 
scholarliness was such that he could appeal to them for 
criticism : ' ' Read my Book of Kings — read also the Latin 
and Greek translation and compare them with my 
version. "-^^ "There are people, Paula and Eusto- 
chium," he writes, "who take offense at seeing your 
names at the beginning of my works. These people do 
not know that Olda prophesied when the men were mute, 
that while Barach was atremble, Deborah saved Israel; 
that Judith and Esther delivered from supreme peril the 
children of God. I pass over in silence Anna and Eliza- 



233 Cf. p. 80. 

234 Clem. Alex. Paedagogus, I, 4. 

235 Pref. Comment. Soph. 



80 SOME MOTIVES IN PAGAN EDUCATION 

betli and the holy women in the Gospel, but humble stars 
when compared with the great luminary, Mary, . . . was 
not it women to whom our Lord first appeared after the 
resurrection?"-^^ 

The Christian appraising of woman is at polar dis- 
tances from that of Demosthenes, who catalogues all 
women in one of the four classes, heterae, slaves, bearers 
of children, caretakers of the home.^^^ The status, social 
and educational, of the Athenian woman about whom he 
wrote was shamefully low. Nowhere did we find pro- 
vision made for the instruction of girls except for some 
meagre training in domestic science given by the mother 
or the nurse. Plato, it is true, speaks, in passing, of edu- 
cated women who were present at the performance of the 
tragedies at the theatre, but these we think were heterae.''''^ 
A further mention is made of women of noble birth re- 
ceiving instruction in music and dancing.^^® These are 
almost isolated instances and represent the maximum of 
education and not the norm. Eeferences to the circum- 
scribed and monotonous lives of women and their rele- 
gation to prescribed and secluded apartments — the gyn- 
aeconitis — are made repeatedly.-*" Perhaps the best 
idea of the pathetic life of the woman can be gleaned 
from Plato 's comparing the life of a tyrannical man who 
is shut off from all human intercourse, to the life of a 
woman, "he lives in his hole like a woman hidden in the 
house.'"" 

The meagre educational opportunities given to women 
are objected to by both Plato and Aristotle. Plato's ob- 
jection is purely utilitarian. He contends that since only 
half of the population is being trained, the state is re- 



236Pref. Comment. Soph. 
237Demosth. In Nearam, 122. 

238 Plato, Laws, 658d. 

239 Aristoph. Lysistrata, 641ff. 

240 Cf. Plato, Laws, 781c; Xenophon, Oecon., VII, 5. 

241 Plato, Rep., 579b. 



COMPARED WITH THE CHRISTIAN IDEAL 81 

duced in efficiency to one-half.'*- In the Republic he lays 
down the platitude to the effect that the "gifts of nature 
are alike diffused in men and women. "^*^ But the influ- 
ence of the philosopher was not weighty enough to over- 
come the long-standing prejudice of the Athenian. 
Strange to say, the only women who were given all the 
educational opportunities of the times were a class whom 
we would term social-outcasts or Pariah. Even the bril- 
liancy of intellect and the political astuteness of Aspasia 
do not lessen our mistrust of her when we consider the 
total unfemininity of her life. 

Spartan girls, it is true, were given the same training 
practicall}^ as Spartan boys, but this training was almost 
wholly physical, and if the effect even upon the sterner 
sex was brutalizing, as was pointed out above,^*" how per- 
nicious must it have been on the gentler sex. Besides, 
the aim of this training was wholly state-utilitarianism 
or, perhaps we had better say, state-selfishness, for 
Sparta had in mind in her training of girls the strength- 
ening and development of the body so as to ensure a 
healthy offspring. Their training was not for the better- 
ment of the individual herself but for the production of 
life. 

When we come to the Roman matron, we find her occu- 
pying a more dignified and deserving position as queen 
of the home,^" as far down as about the middle of the 
third century B. C. From that time on, her position be- 
came gradually more and more unenviable. The sanctity 
of the home was gradually invaded by the infidelity of an 
overwhelmingly large number of husbands, and divorces 
seem to have been readily secured on the slightest pretext 
or, as it seems, at the will of the husband. Divorces were 
especially prevalent after the Punic Wars. It is surpris- 

242 Laws, VII, 855. 

243 Rep., V. 451. 

244 Cf. p. 31. 

245 Cf. p. 47 above. 



82 SOME MOTIVES IN TAGAN EDUCATION 

ing to find the number of Rome's truly great generals 
who had put away their wives. Among these are Sulla, 
Caesar, Pompey, Marc Anthony, and Augustus. The 
Roman marriage was essentially different from the Chris- 
tian marriage. If the maiden contracted the kind of mar- 
riage which gave to the husband the "manus," she was 
considered only as the husband's daughter and as the 
sister of his children. The husband had over her then the 
right of correction.^**^ Solemn marriages or confarrea- 
tion, which was the marriage bond most difficult to abol- 
ish through divorce, had become very rare at the com- 
mencement of the Christian Era, according to Tacitus. ^*^ 
The result was that since, previous to this, the high priest 
could only be selected from the product of such a union, 
a change had to be made in the requirement for eligibility 
to this office. ''The custom had been to name three patri- 
archs, descended from a marriage contracted according 
to the right of confarreation. Out of the number pro- 
posed, one was elected high-priest. But this was no longer 
in use. The ceremony of confarreation was grown obso- 
lete; or, if observed, it was by a few families only."-** 
This was about 23 A. D., and is significant, showing as it 
does, that solemn marriages were considered too binding. 
Stranger still, learned women were particularly dreaded 
as wives. Martial says: "Sit mihi verna satur, sit non 
doctissima conjux."-*'' Christianity teaches that the in- 
tellect is one of the noblest faculties of the soul, and has 
always set a premium upon learning. 

But of first importance in Christian education is the 
value placed upon human life. This high estimate flows 
naturally from the knowledge of the primal right given 
the individual to retain that life which God has given him 
until the same Hand that created the vital principle, the 



246 Cf. Duruy, Hist. Rome, Vol. V, Sec. II, p. 542. 

247 Cf. below. 

248 Tac. Ann., IV, 16. 

249 Mart. Epigr., II, 90; Cf. Juv. Sat, VI, 434ff. 



COMPARED WITH THE CHRISTIAN IDEAL 83 

immortal soul, separates soul and body, bringing about 
that dissolution which we term death. There are excep- 
tions to this general law as, for instance, when a man is 
a menace to the lives of his neighbors. But this is a case 
calling for special consideration. Christianity teaches 
that the right of life, being a primary right, as such takes 
precedence over so-called secondary rights, so that if a 
person be in extreme need, the secondary right of property 
is non-existent to the extent that enough food or means of 
getting it may be taken to support life temporarily. 
Again, if one's life is in danger, he may, to protect him- 
self, kill his assailant if need be. Thus, even the Deca- 
logue yields to this primary right. 

Contrast this Christian dispensation with the state- 
parent in Sparta depriving children of life in the effort to 
teach them endurance. "^'^ Or compare the Christian's 
care of the infant with the total disregard for life which 
we find in the Athenian and Eoman homes. In these 
homes, the babes were reared if the father so willed and 
exposed to die on the cross-roads or mountain ravines in 
case the rearing of one more child did not seem expedient. 
In Sparta, where the State assumed the duty of parent, 
the State accordingly said to the child "you may live" or 
if it were a fragile child, "you must die." Even Plato 
and Aristotle sanction the custom of exposing children. 
Plato counsels also other means not less ignoble,-^^ but 
under certain conditions he thinks the infants ought to 
be killed. The scheme was as follows: "The principle 
has been already laid down that the best of either sex 
should be united witli the best as often as possible, and 
the inferior with the inferior ; and they are to rear the 
offspring of the one union, but not of the other ; for this is 
the only way of keeping the flock in prime condition."-^- 
This is a purely biological or animal arrangement and is 

-'3f' Cf. p. 27 above. 

--•iCf. Rep. V, 461; Theat., 151c; Aris. Pol., 1385b. 

252 Rep. v, 459. 



84 SOME MOTIVES IN PAGAN EDUCATION 

a surprising statement from one who believed in the im- 
mortality of the human soul. Aristotle says tersely, 
*'With respect to the exposing or bringing up of children, 
let it be a law, that nothing imperfect or maimed be 
brought up. ' ''^^ In the same connection he suggests other 
regulations to be resorted to in order to prevent the City- 
state from increasing too rapidly in infant population.*" 

How different Plato's ideal scheme of marriage and 
parentage from the Christian dispensation — love, sancti- 
fied by the Sacrament of Matrimony, uniting youth and 
maiden in an indissoluble union. "For this cause shall a 
man leave his father and mother and shall cleave to his 
wife."*^^ ''Husbands love your wives, as Christ also 
loved the church, and delivered Himself up for it.""*^" 
' ' Thy wife shall be as a fruitful vine, on the sides of thy 
house. Thy children as young olive plants around thy 
table."-" 

The practice of exposing children was much more com- 
mon in Rome than in Sparta or in Athens. Duruy enume- 
rates some of the causes leading most often to this bar- 
barous custom, "doubts as to the parentage, as in the 
case of the Emperor Claudius who ordered his daughter 
to be cast down at the corner of a boundary,^^* sometimes 
also poverty, or a family already numerous. . . . Feeble- 
ness of constitution, deformity, brought destruction. "^^^ 
We have abundant evidence of the custom of putting the 
deformed to death.-*^** Seneca dismisses the question in a 
matter-of-fact way by saying, "liberos quoque, si debiles 
monstriosque editi sunt, mergimus."^*^^ There seems to 



253 Pol., 1335b. 

254 Loc. cit. 

255 Eph. V, 31. 

256 Eph. V, 25. 

257 Ps. CXXVII, 3. 

258 Suet, Oct. 65. 

259 Duruy, Hist. Rome, Vol. V, 518, Sec. 2. 

2coCf. Cic. De Leg., Ill, 8; Liv., XXVII, 37;; II, 41; Dionys., VIII; 
79, et al. 

261 Sen. De Ira, I, 15. 



COMPARED WITH THE CHRISTIAN IDEAL 85 

have been considerable discrimination in favor of male 
issue.'"' In case of a father's enforced absence from 
home at the time of his child's birth, previous leave, it 
would appear, was given to raise the infant or it was or- 
dered to be exposed. "It is necessary for me to go away 
from here but the offspring that shall be born do thou 
bring up. ' '-*'^ 

Christianity, of course, teaches that the fact of being 
alive gives to the individual, whether male or female, 
weak or strong, bond or free, the right to live. ' ' It taught 
from the beginning that God is Father of all mankind, 
that every child born into the world is impressed by the 
image and likeness of God, that human life is a sacred 
thing, and that no system of education may be tolerated 
which overlooks or forgets the infinite value of a soul."* 
In Christian times, the power of the father is not abso- 
lute but fiduciary. He is bound by both conscience and the 
laws of the land to not only let his children live but 
also, while they are in their minority, to support them. It 
is a fact not without much significance, as showing 
Christ's infinite compassion for the weak and suffering, 
that out of the forty-nine times we could find specific 
mention made of the kind of miracle the Saviour wrought, 
no fewer than twenty-seven are restorations of health, 
sometimes many, like the ten lepers, are made whole at 
one time ; or raising of the dead. Christ checked the ef- 
fect of the laws of disintegration and restored to perfect 
health one who had been dead three days and "who al- 
ready stinketh"; the Greeks and the Romans took the 
lives of their own infants at will ; often, too, thousands of 
adults died to "make a Roman holiday." 

Not only did Christ have compassion upon the sick but 
He lavs down as a command to the twelve whom He sent 



202 cf. Terent, Heautontim., Act. IV, Sc. I. 

263piaut. Amph., 556; Terent., Andr., 219. 

* Turner, Christ. Ideal of Ed., Cath. Ed. Rev., Vol. II, p. 867. 



86 SOME MOTIVES IN PAGAN EDUCATION 

out to convert the world, ''Heal the sick, raise the dead, 
cleanse the lepers, cast out devils; freely have you re- 
ceived, freely give."^"* And the command was accom- 
panied by the gift of miracles. Charity towards the suf- 
fering is a distinctly Christian virtue. Charity is the first 
and, in the last analysis, the only condition for entering 
the kingdom of heaven. ' ' For I was hungry and you gave 
me to eat ; I was thirsty and you gave me to drink ; I was 
a stranger and you took me in; naked and you covered 
me; sick, and you visited me; I was in prison and you 
came to me. . . . Amen, I say to you, as long as you did 
it to one of these my least brethren, you did it to me. ' '"^* 
With the Greeks and the Romans, while hospitality was 
practiced as one of the amenities of life, charity was un- 
known.'*"'" The semblance of charity would, no doubt, 
have been deemed weakness. 

We saw above-''^ that the principal motive for effort 
proposed in Sparta's and in Athens' elaborate system of 
contests, the training for which took up such a large part 
of the lives of their youth, was emulation. Leaving out of 
consideration the gross excesses to which Greek contests, 
"'fights," etc., were carried, necessitating sacrifice of 
time, and leading to brutality and frequently to loss of 
life, the motive itself would be wholly at variance with the 
spirit of Christianity. In the first place, objects of sense 
are given the dominant position. "Here the prizes are 
always to the strong (most capable), and, were there no 
higher goal of human endeavor, man would be compelled 
to maintain himself in the ape and tig^r struggle for ex- 
istence through his development of tooth, claw and 
muscle."^®® The Christian's eye is ever directed towards 
spiritual goods rather than towards objects of sense. 



264 Matt., X, 8. 

265 Matt, XXV, 35, 40. 

266 cf. p. 18 above. 

267 cf. p. 19ff. 

268 Shields, Christ. Ideal of Ed., Cath. Ed. Rev., Vol. IV, p. 40, 



COMPARED WITH THE CHRISTIAN IDEAL 87 

''Be not solicitous, therefore, saying, "What shall we 
eat: or what shall we drink, or wherewith shall we be 
clothed "? For after all these things do the heathens seek. 
For your Father knoweth that you have need of all these 
things.'""'® But besides, two distinctly Christian virtues, 
charity and humility, were here violated. "But above all 
these things have charity, which is the bond of perfec- 
tion. ' '"° ' ' That no flesh shall glory in his sight. ' '"^ * ' Be 
humbled in the sight of the Lord, and He will exalt 
you.""^ What hast thou that thou hast not received? 
And if thou hast received, why dost thou glory as if thou 
hadst not received it?"-" St. Paul tells the Corinthians 
that he does all things for the Gospel's sake and re- 
minds them that of all who run in their races only one 
receives the prize, though, as we may infer, each of the 
contestants expends every effort and therefore does not 
lose through anj^ culpable negligence. Still, only one could 
win. But in the contest for spiritual goods all may win. 
"So run that you may obtain."'"* "And every one that 
striveth for the mastery refraineth himself from all 
things : and they indeed that they may receive a cor- 
ruptible crown; but we an incorruptible one."^^^ In the 
Christian dispensation, not success, but spiritualized mo- 
tive accompanied by earnest effort ensures the reward. 
The Christian judges not by the changing standards of 
time but of eternity. * ' The poor, ignorant creature who, 
in the midst of trials and sufferings, gives expression to 
the optimistic sentiment, 'What does it matter if one 
has the grace of God,' is wiser than all the sages, and 
unknowingly sums up the whole philosophy of Christian 
education. Spiritual interests take precedence over the 



2G9 Matt., VI., 31£f. 

270 Col., Ill, 14. 

271 I Cor., I, 29. 

272 James, IV, 10. 

273 I Cor., IV, 7. 

274 I Cor., IX, 27. 

275 I Cor., IX, 25. 



88 SOME iMOTIVES IN PAGAN EDUCATION 

physical, the intellectual, and, if a conflict were possible, 
even the moral. "^''^ 

Another important point of contrast between the Greek, 
especially the Spartan, life of training and the Christian 
life is that the Spartan spent most of his time in prepara- 
tion for his life as soldier-citizen. He took no time to 
live; the Christian is taught to fulfill his duties day by 
day — life and not preparation for life. The most ordi- 
nary duties, as the Christian knows, are supernaturalized 
by the intention of fulfilling, in their accomplishment, the 
Will of God. ''Therefore, whether you eat or drink, or 
whatsoever else you do, do all to the glory of God. ' '-" 

Next to emulation, inhibition was perhaps the means 
most often used to maintain discipline. The Roman boy 
was flogged-^® to make him memorize his Tables of the 
Law; the Spartan boy was flogged to teach him endur- 
ance,"^ to punish him for an answer lacking in Spartan 
brevity, or to punish him for lack of dexterity-^^ in steal- 
ing, etc. Christ's method was never coercive. Only on a 
single occasion do we find Him resorting to corporal pun- 
ishment.^^^ Rarely or never do we find any other method 
used than appeal to the feelings and to reason. When 
many of His disciples "went back and walked no more 
with Him,"-*- when He told them that He was to give 
them Plis Flesh to eat and His Blood to drink, He did not 
force them to remain and accept this truth. He knew the 
utter uselessness of coercion. "Therefore did I say to 
you, that no man can come to me, unless it be given him 
by my Father."-^" 

Christ rarely uses the negative method. He never de- 



276 Turner, Ch. Ideal of Ed., Cath. Ed. Rev., Vol. II, p. 870. 
277 1 Cor., X, 31. 

278 Cf. p. 50ff above. 

279 Cf. p. 27 above. 

280 Ibid. 

281 John, II. 14ff. 

282 John, VI, 67. 

283 Ibid, 66. 



COMPARED WITH THE CHRISTIAN IDEAL 80 

nounces the individual. When He denounces, it is a gen- 
eral denunciation of evils common to a class. "Woe to 
you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites; because you are 
like to whited sepulchres."-** 

The negative method which entered so largely into 
Pagan motivation appealed not to the intellect but to the 
will. It simply blocked up the channel for the outflow of 
nerve energy forcing the current through other channels. 
The Christian teacher knows that, though he can block 
the channel, he cannot annihilate the current. It will flow 
out through some channel, perhaps more anti-social or 
self -degrading. The positive method, the one used by the 
Master, is also the ideal method to the mind of the Chris- 
tian teacher. This method appeals to the intellect by 
arousing feelings of brotherly love, appreciation of the 
beauty of high conduct, etc. This positive method opens 
another channel for the outlet of the nerve-current and a 
more desirable one. 

The Christian teacher's aim is to build up character 
and therefore he recognizes that while the negative 
method must be used at times in the case of very young 
children or to prevent positive evil, what is desirable and 
good should not be associated with what is painful. But, 
if the negative method of punishment should be used to 
coerce the will to make the intellect lend itself to the ac- 
quiring of knowledge which is useful and good, a painful 
reaction is associated with a desirable line of activity. 
This was not Christ's method. Denunciation and the 
pain it caused was associated only with what was vicious 
and highly reprehensible and, then, inhibition was used 
only as a last resort. 

To the Christian, discipline exists for the sake of build- 
ing up character ; to develop strength of will and docility 
of will at the same time ; to enable the child to obej^ a law 
because it is a law. Fiat justitia, ruat coelum. But the 



284 Matt., XXIII, 27. 



90 soiiE jioTivEs IX pa(;an education 

Christian obedience to the law is not obedience to the let- 
ter of the law, as with the Jews, but primarily to the 
spirit of the law. "The letter killeth but the spirit 
quickeneth. " It is not formal obedience merely but 
obedience of heart and mind, not lip-service, nor self- 
prescribed service as with the Jews. ''And in vain do 
they worship me, teaching doctrines and precepts of 
men. For leaving the commandments of God you hold 
the traditions of men, the washing of pots and of cups : 
and many other things do you like to these. ' '"®° Thus the 
Jews failed through their stubborn tenacity to self-im- 
posed, minor regulations, wrongly thought to be pre- 
scribed by the "Law," while the fundamental virtues 
were neglected. In Sparta, again, obedience to the law 
was not free obedience. That it did not build up char- 
acter was evident from the fact that, when away from 
the vigilance of his own laws, as we showed above,^®® the 
Spartan of all men was the most lawless. 

While an appreciation of the aesthetic enters into the 
Church 's every activity, as seen in the beauty of her litur- 
gical services, the magnificence of her sacred edifice, etc., 
yet, outside the power beauty has to raise the mind to con- 
template the Source of all beauty, to raise the thoughts 
above the sordidness of what is purely utilitarian, etc., 
the Christian knows that beauty consists primarily in 
beauty of soul. The Christian knows that the most de- 
crepit and deformed body may be the abode of a soul 
capable of the most exalted aspirations. The Athenian 
Greeks worshipped^^^ physical beauty and so highly de- 
veloped was their aesthetic sense to the exclusion of the 
spiritual that they could not associate goodness or virtue 
with an ungainly body. 

But endless comparisons could be made between the 
two systems, one the ideally perfect, if strictly adhered 



^85 Mark, VII, 7£f. 

28C p. 35. 

287 Cf. p. 42 above. 



COMPARED WITH THE CHRISTIAN IDEAL 91 

to ; the other, imperfect in its foundation and, therefore, 
in its whole superstructure. 

One more point we would note. The Romans-^® 
trained for excellence in the avocations of this world 
alone. Christ asks the question which the Christl)an 
child can answer better than the pagan philosopher: 
''What shall it profit a man, if he gain the whole world, 
and sutf er the loss of his own soul 1 ' '^^^ 

This brings us to the constructive side of this chapter, 
to the question, how did the Master teach? What was 
there in the manner of His teaching that made the five 
thousand follow Him into the desert, forgetting the ob- 
vious fact that they were becoming hungry and fatigued 
and that they had brought **no bread." No doubt, it was 
in large part the infinite charm of His Personality, but 
what concerns us most here is His method of instructing 
those who were thus drawn to follow Him. 

In the first place we have the testimony of both St. 
Mark and St. Matthew: '^ Without parables He did not 
speak to them.'"^" The Saviour never begins by stating 
an abstract principle or law. He embodies His teaching 
in concrete form and in such a manner as to appeal to the 
feelings and to the previous contents of the brain, the ap- 
perception masses. He utilizes the instincts; He puts 
His teaching into germinal form capable of development. 
When Christ wished to bring home to His hearers the 
lesson of the patience of God in dealing with sinners, He 
prepared them to receive the lesson by arousing interest 
and readiness to believe His Divine Word through the 
working of miracles. On the same day, the Sabbath, He 
cured the man with the withered hand,^^^ and **many 
others followed Him and He healed them" and cast out 
a devil, ' * and all the multitude were amazed. ' ' Then He 



288 cf. p. 48 above. 

289 Mark, VIII, 36. 

290 Matt., XIII, 34; Mark, IV, 33. 

291 Matt, XII, lOff. 



92 SOME MOTIVES IN PAGAN EDUCATION 

tells them the simple but wonderful parable of the cockle 
and the good seed.-"^ He appeals to the familiar objects 
of sense around Him. The Saviour and his disciples had 
gone ' ' through the corn on the Sabbath ; and His disciples 
being hungry began to pluck the ears, and to eat."^*^ 
The parable, then, must have been related in a country- 
place with the ripe, full ears of corn (wheat) waving 
round. The Teacher knew the dread the husbandman has 
of cockle because of its perniciousness in yielding so much 
seed, thus multiplying with alarming ease and hence sap- 
ping the desirable mineral content from the soil. He 
knew it was furthermore dreaded, since, if ground with 
the ripe grain, it caused sickness to those who ate the 
flour. Thus was appeal made to their experience and to 
their feeling, perhaps, as well. Then the sower sowing the 
seed, the oversowing of the cockle, the surprise and chagrin 
it would cause the husbandman to find cockle springing up 
where he had sown only good seed and the inutility of 
trying to pull out the cockle, the roots of which would be 
so interlaced with the wheat, without injuring the latter. 
All these facts appealed to them and were readily under- 
stood and accepted. But this was as far as the multitude 
could follow Him for the present. He had aroused their 
interest and also that laudable curiosity wliich normally 
is a concomitant in the brain with partially known truth 
apprehended as good. But they were not yet ready for 
the application of the parable. Christ follows the first 
with two more parables,^^"' developing the same truth, one 
the comparison of the Kingdom of Heaven to a mustard 
seed; the other, the comparison of the Kingdom of 
Heaven to leaven. All three parables, as we see, were 
drawn from objects of familiar everyday experience. This, 
no doubt, was primarily in order to make the comparison 
meaningful, but also, we think, in order to recall to mem- 



292 Matt, XIII, 24-30. 36-45. 

293 Matt, XII, 1. 
-'»i Matt, XIII, 31ff. 



COMTAHED WITH THE CHRISTIAN IDEAL 93 

ory in the future the Saviour's teaching whenever these 
same objects of sense were presented. The application of 
the parable was too hard for them as yet. Had He told 
them that the cockle represented sinners, it would per- 
haps have driven them to more scrupulous observance of 
the "letter of the law which killeth." Whatever His 
motive, the evangelist simply relates that He dismissed 
the multitude and went into the house, '^and his disciples 
came to him, saying expound to us the parable of the 
cockle of the field. "-^^ Then He explains to them alone 
the significance of the parable. The Perfect Teacher gave 
to each of the two classes, the mixed multitude of tillers 
of the soil and shepherds together with His few disciples, 
and the disciples apart from the multitude, just such a 
degree of knowledge as each class had the capacity to 
assimilate. Thus Christ withholds an important fact 
until the minds of His hearers are prepared to receive it. 
His method takes into account all the laws of mental de- 
velopment that the past half century of psychological re- 
search has imperfectly formulated. The principles that 
especially appear in connection with this parable are the 
principles of assimilation and apperception. ''The cen- 
ter of orientation in educational endeavor" is not the 
body of truth to be imparted but the needs and capacities 
of the growing mind.'''*' Saint Ignatius, Bishop of Antioch, 
in his Epistle to the Trallians, written during the last 
quarter of the first century of the Christian Era, says: 
''Am I not able to write to you heavenly things? But I 
fear lest I should cause you harm being babes. So bear 
with me lest not being able to take them in you should 
be choked.'"" Thus was the method of Christ passed on 
to the Christian teacher through the Apostolic Fathers. 
This principle, in application, forms a striking contrast 

295 Matt., XIII, 36. 

29«Cf. Shields, Ed. Psych., Wash., 1905. Chap. 25. 

^8T St. Ig. Epist., Tral. 5. 



94 SOME MOTIVES IN PAGAN EDUCATION 

to the Greek custom of giving to the youngest child 
Homer for his first book. 

The fear that unassimilated and therefore non-fecund 
truth would be rather harmful than beneficial seems to us 
to be implied in the parable of the talents,^^^ the barren 
fig-tree,-^** etc. 

The truths that Christ imparted in the parables, as 
elsewhere, are not static but dynamic. They are great 
germinal truths suited in their unfolding to the capacity 
of the mind of the child of six or that of the adult scholar. 
Christ does not present isolated principles, guiding con- 
duct, one by one, in such a way as to make it possible to 
memorize them and put them into practice before another 
principle is imparted. He presents great, germinal 
thoughts in concrete form and clothed in all the grace and 
persuasiveness of the parable or the similitude. He ap- 
peals to the feeling of parental love and care to make the 
multitude understand His love. "Can a woman forget 
her infant, so as not to have pity on the son of her womb ? 
But if she should forget, yet will not I forget thee."^"** 
This prophesy of the Messiah from Isaias is fulfilled in 
the New Testament — "I am the good shepherd. "^"^ 
''Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved 
them unto the end."^^'" The great germinal fact of God's 
Providence for men is embodied in the parable of the 
lilies of the field.^^^ When He wishes to bring home the 
consoling fact that all our prayers are answered, He ex- 
presses the truth under the easily understood metaphor 
of ' ' asking ' ' and ' ' knocking. " ' ' Ask, and it shall be given 
to you; seek,, and you shall find; knock, and it shall be 
opened to you."^-'* But lest the asker might doubt, He 



298 Matt, XXV, 14ff. 

299 Luke, XIII, 6ff. 

300 1s., XLIX. 15. 
SOI John X, 11. 

302 John XIII, 1. 

303 Matt., VI, 28ff. 

304 Matt., VII, 7. 



COMPARED WITH THE CHRISTIAN IDEAL 95 

compares His love to the love of a father for his son. He 
appeals to their feeling of paternal love. ' ' What man is 
there among you of whom if his son shall ask him bread, 
will he reach him a stone"? . . . How much more will your 
Father Who is in heaven give good things to them that 
ask him. ' '""^ From the love and care of the earthly father, 
the love and care of the Heavenly Father are taught. 

But examples might be taken from almost every page 
of the Holy Gospels./ These principles, the embodiment 
of great germinal truths in concrete setting, appeal to the 
apperception masses, appeal to the interests and to the 
feelings, presentation of truth in such a manner as to be 
capable of being assimilated at once, are some of the prin- 
cipal ones that find expression in all books on teaching''^*' 
which aim, however imperfectly, to embody the method of 
the Great Teacher. 

One more point of contrast between the Pagan, the 
Jewish, and the Christian educator stands out promi- 
nently. The large part played by inhibition in the two 
former types of schools has been discussed. The ideal 
Christian teacher knows that love and joy, and freedom, 
except in what is sinful or anti-social, are the natural 
companions of the child and are as necessary for his 
mental and bodily development as warmth and moisture 
and freedom from undue restraint are to the flower. 
When the apostles would have kept back the little ones 
from the tired Master, He rebukes them and gives ex- 
pression to what may be termed the Magna Charta of 
childhood: "Suffer the little children to come unto Me, 
and forbid them not; for of such is the kingdom of 
heaven. ' '""^ 



305 Matt, VII, 9ff. 

306 cf. Shields, Prim. Meth. Wash., 1912. 

307 Mark, X, 14. 



CHAPTER IX 

CONCLUSION 

As we look over this work in retrospect and try to 
formulate the main facts brought out, one flact that 
stands out prominentl}^ is the overwhelming dominance 
given to the play of a single instinct — emulation. We 
maintain that this is an instinct whose cultivation through 
stimuli outside what the individual himself normally 
meets is unnecessary and undesirable, that it is over- 
cultivated in the large mass of men without conscious 
cultivation, that despite the spread of the Gospel with its 
message of the common brotherhood of men, emulation, 
finding its satisfaction in amassed wealth to the exclusion 
of others, in positions of trust held worthily or unworth- 
ily, etc., is the basis of many of the social evils of today. 
Nowhere, in our study, down to approximately 100 A. D., 
except in Pagan educational sources, could we find any 
attempt at justification for its cultivation, though its 
power to sustain effort is dwelt upon by educational 
writers of the Renaissance and the early modern periods, 
and neither the Old, nor the New Testament ever put 
forward this motive as an incentive to effort. 
/ Next, it seemed that the system of state assumption of 
the right of parent to educate, in Sparta, led to many 
undesirable results. Among these we would mention 
the weakening of the family bond. Then, Sparta 's con- 
stant vigilance from birth to death, making the free 
moral act of an individual an impossibility in 
effect, and making it almost inevitable that if the 
prop of state supervision were removed by going out- 
side the state, the citizen would, as he actually did, 
become the most lawless of men, was deplorable in its 
consequences. In contrast with Sparta's code of morals, 
the Christian code would class all such acts done under 

96 



COMPARED WITH THE CHRISTIAN IDEAL 9Y 

the stress of vigilance simply, compulsion, or routine, as 
non-moral; therefore, the lowest grade of human acts 
on the border land past the purely animal. 

Physical strength in Sparta and perfection of body in 
Athens, being at a premium, the result was that life sank 
to the stage where only the ''fittest survive." Infants 
were ruthlessly exposed, as we saw. 
/ Then the life of the woman was held down to almost the 
purely animal level in both Sparta and Athens. She 
had not even the primary right of mother to raise her 
offspring. The state in one case and her husband in the 
other gave her the privilege to see grow up to manhood 
or womanhood the infant which she bore. This deplor- 
able and unnatural condition existed also in Rome, as we 
saw. 

The total disregard of property rights in Sparta would 
to us be reprehensible, though there can be no doubt that 
property was not so carefully differentiated in Sparta as 
it is in a modern commonwealth. 

Then, the training to meet attacks from only one side, 
the pain side, in Sparta and the lack of training to meet 
attacks from the pleasure side was wholly contrary to the 
laws of life. Expression of physical pain is a conse- 
quence^^F^ highly developed nervous system, and while 
the man who shrinks from bearing any pain is a coward, j 
still, bearing excessive pain unflinchingly is not normal.^ 
The Saviour Himself prayed — ' ' Father, if it be possible, 
let this chalice pass away from me," yet, resigned to the 
will of the Father, he adds, ''Not my will but thine be 
done. ' ' The Christian is taught to bear the pain sent to 
him by the will of the Father for his chastening, with 
resignation; the Pagan was taught to bear pain simply 
as a test of animal endurance. Self-imposed pain, if ex- 
cessive, or undirected, in the Christian code of morals, 
is reprehensible. 

The Christian training is primarily to meet attacks 



98 SOME MOTIVES IN PAGAN EDUCATION 



; 



coming from the pleasure side — not bearing pain un- 
flinchingly but the direction of thought, word and deed 
o as to live spotlessly under the eye of a just Judge. 

Next, that almost exclusive training in Athens for per- 
fection of body and their extravagant praise of the beau- 
tiful in physical form, led, as we indicated before, to the 
love of the sensual. Besides, that undue liberty given 
the Athenian with no code of morals and no standard but 
the aesthetic, made him a volatile man, easily swayed by 
every novelty. 

Rome 's training for simply the proper fulfilling of the 
duties of business or avocation lacked that spiritual ob- 
jective which Christians have and which supernaturalizes 
all their ordinary duties. Lacking this mooring, they 
lacked all. 

In conclusion it must be admitted that the life of the 
Pagan child in the countries studied was not an enviable 
one. His being given a chance to live at all was prob- 
lematic. His tasks were highly unfitted to the child mind. 
The motives used to hold him down to these unchildlike 
tasks were deplorable. These are some of the large facts 
that stand out darkly and prominently in pagan educa- 
tion. 

The Hebrew ideal, as we saw, was high, obedience to 
the behests of Jehovah. Their limitations, we have al- 
ready discussed — principally, narrowness in their inter- 
pretation of the ''Law." 

Christianity in teaching the dominance of the spiritual 
and the intellectual over the physical has struck at the 
roots of the evil in Pagan training; in proclaiming the 
dominance of the spirit of the law rather than the letter 
merely, it has struck at the roots of the failure in Jew- 
ish education. It has freed woman from a life little 
above animal existence, it has given to all children born 
into this world the right to live, it has surrounded the 
life of the child with joy and has lightened his labour of 



COMPARED WITH THE CHRISTIAN IDEAL 99 

acquiring his social inheritance by utilizing the God-given 
instincts. The Christian ideal is perfect, being moulded 
and modeled on the perfection of the Master ; the limita- 
tions are those imposed by the working out of any ideal 
in these our limitations of time and space. 



VITA 

The author of this Dissertation, Sister Katharine Mc- 
Carthy, O.S.B., was born January 18th, 1876, in Sunni- 
dale, Ontario, Canada. She pursued her elementary 
studies in the school of her native town and passed the 
usual examination required for entrance into Canadian 
High Schools in 1885. In 1889 she entered the Collegiate 
Institute, Collingwood, Ontario, and remained there three 
years. Her academic work was then suspended for some 
time. In 1894 she entered the novitiate of the Sisters of 
St. Benedict, Duluth, Minn. From 1896 to 1911 she taught 
in the Sacred Heart Institute, Duluth, Minn., now th^ 
College of St. Scholastica, and worked at intervals in the 
University of Minnesota, the University of Chicago, and 
the College of St. Scholastica, receiving the A. B. degree 
in 1911. In 1908 she received the Minnesota State Pro- 
fessional Certificate. In the summer of 1911 she began 
graduate work at the Catholic University of America, 
following courses under Doctors Shields, Pace, Turner, 
McCormick, Coeln, Froning, Messrs. Parker and Teil- 
lard, the principal courses being in the departments of 
Education, Philosophy, Chemistry, and Biology. 



lOU 



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101 



102 SOME MOTIVES IN PAGAN EDUCATION 

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COMPARED AVITH THE CHRISTIAN IDEAL 103 

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(Translation of Dakyns. London, 1892.) 



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